


Wrath

by MiceAndIce



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Betrayal, Blood and Violence, Confusion, Dysfunctional Family, Family Feels, Family Issues, Friendship, Gen, Love, Loyalty, Mindfuck, Noah Family - Freeform, Noah of Wrath, Noah!Lenalee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2019-09-26 11:42:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17141135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiceAndIce/pseuds/MiceAndIce
Summary: Lenalee awakens as the Noah of Wrath.





	1. Awakening

**Author's Note:**

> I've always thought Lenalee would make a great Noah, and I was sorely disappointed by the lack of fics exploring the idea. I was thus forced to make my own, but I'd love to see other writers tackle the idea as well.

Lenalee blinks once. She blinks again. Her eyelids start fluttering, and she reaches up a hand to her eyes. Something is dripping into them. It’s thick but still liquid and hot and sticky. Her hands come away red. She’s seen this before. Why is it so familiar? The liquid keeps dripping into her eyes, and she tries to wipe it away. Her world tilts as it fills with red, and she realizes she is on the ground.

“Lenalee!” Someone is screaming her name. Someone is shaking her. “Lenalee!”

An explosion rocks her temples, sending fire through her veins. The blood keeps falling, drowning her vision. All she sees is red and more red – so much red that it turns black; and with the black, her mind goes blank, and the pain vanishes in an instant.

* * *

Everything is dark. Dryness like cotton fills her mouth, choking her, scratching her. Pain stabs her stomach, forehead, and throat. Again? Not again. Please. She cannot stand feeling blood drip from her forehead again.

Lenalee cannot feel her legs, her arms, her feet. Everything else hurts so bad while her extremities feel so numb. Does she even have them anymore? Does it even matter if she cannot move them? Her tongue runs over her lips: dry and cracked. It hurts even more from the roughness of her tongue; it catches on her cuts, pulling the tears and stinging them. Komui is not here, and she would cry only if her body could produce the tears.

Eyelids flutter behind a blindfold – no, no, she must stay awake. It hurts to be awake, but it hurts more to sleep. She does not want to see that apocalypse anymore: no more dead bodies, no more destroyed homes, no more red setting suns. Her chest still burns from the dreams of hours ago.

There they go: her eyelids flutter again. She fights so hard to stay awake. She would slap her own face and hold her eyes open herself if she could only locate her hands. Where are her hands? Why can’t she move them? Ah! Heat flares through her fingers; a choked cry of joy escapes her lips. She tries to move them towards her face, but the movement is cut short by a clinking of metal: chains. Fire explodes in her chest, and the only factor keeping Lenalee from trashing and screaming is her overwhelming exhaustion. As it is, a quiet, strained groan fills the air around her. She sounds like a dying animal, strangled and choking.

A voice breaks through the darkness, hushing her groans. Lenalee startles at the sound, and the voice grows gentler in response. It hushes her again. “You’re going to be okay.”

A hand strokes Lenalee’s forehead, smoothing away her drenched and sticky hair from her face. The fire in her calms at the touch, retreating to smolder in her gut.

“Brother?” she hears a weak, trembling voice echo in her head, and it takes her several moments to process it as her own. The hand on her forehead continues its stroking motion, moving to her hair now, combing through it. It gently works though the tangles, taking every precaution to avoid pulling at the strands. She doesn’t remember Komui ever being able to move his fingers so gracefully.

“She doesn’t look like she’s all here. You really think this is a good idea?” Another voice? Lenalee’s eyebrows furrow, and the hand goes to rub at the forming wrinkles on her face. Lenalee relaxes again. The voices sound nice enough.

“Of course, she’s not all here. We need to help her. Who knows what they’ve done to her?” She hears a sigh, but she cannot tell who it came from. Her eyelids flutter again and again, and she feels the fingers wander from her face to the back of her head, playing with the buckles on the blindfold. The wretched metal thing is pulled from her face, and Lenalee blinks her eyes quickly, desperate for her sense of sight.

Lenalee wants to look at her saviors, but her vision is too blurred from her long deprivation from light, let alone her sheer exhaustion. Everything shakes as her eyelids close again, and with all her struggling, she manages to only crack her eyes half open again.

“You’re tired,” she hears one of them say to her. “Go to sleep.”

She cannot. She does not want to. Lenalee fights against the natural urge to blink, knowing she may not have enough strength to open her eyes again. A short laugh fills the air, disarming her entirely. Her eyes slip shut. That sound is so sweet; she wants to hear it again. Everything has been so harsh lately, and that sound was so kind, so different. A blessing from the devil, certainly, since her god is nowhere to be found.

“Go to sleep. You’re okay now.” A kiss touches her forehead, and she is weightless. Lenalee feels herself slipping away, and she is too tired to be surprised that she does not mind anymore. Her ever constant fear has vanished, if only for the moment. The heat in her gut has been replaced with a soothing calm.

“Come on, Tyki. Help me take her home.”

Tyki. Lenalee’s brain latches onto that name in her last moment of consciousness, desperately trying to make her remember something. Darkness takes her away, however, before her mind can startle her awake with fear

* * *

Warm. Her hand is warm. Lenalee sighs and sinks further into the pillows haloing her head. They feel so soft, better than anything she has ever laid upon.

Lenalee’s eyes snap open.

She does not recognize where she is: the room is dark but comfortably so; its darkness created by pulled curtains is meant to lull the inhabitants of this room, not to blind them. The colors she can make out in the dark are rich – deep browns in the wood of the furniture, scarlet curtains and rugs. And the bed – oh, the bed! Lenalee has never been in a room with a bed this large before or with such elegant covers. How is anyone able to retreat from this beauty every morning?

Her roaming thoughts are cut short as her roaming eyes continue their journey – from the walls, around the room, across the bed, and finally sweeping to the form laying directly beside her. Lenalee snatches her hand away, pressing it against her chest as her heartbeat quickens. The body near her stirs in the seat it has nearly fallen off. They slowly props themselves on their elbows from where the upper half of their body had slumped against the bed. The person yawns and rubs at their eyes.

“Finally awake, eh? Good morning! – wait.” The girl in the chair pauses, seemingly considering something unknown to Lenalee. The girl nods her head after a second and continues speaking. “Good afternoon actually. Sleep well?”

Lenalee stares at the girl. Her heartbeats pound in her ears, and she wonders if Road can hear each rush of blood through her body.

“Geez, what’s with that wide-eyed look? You still have your tongue, right? Say something!” Lenalee feels a poke against her cheek. Road is poking her. A strange flood of anger heats the fearful chill in her body, and she nearly spits her words.

“Don’t touch me.” The girl in front of her blinks once, then twice, almost as if in surprise. She pulls her hand away from the exorcist and smiles.

“Sorry,” she says, and now Lenalee is the one looking stupid. She did not expect the Noah to actually listen to her, much less to apologize to her. Silence reigns between them now, waiting to see who will speak next. A minute passes with nothing but a staring contest.

Everything around them is suddenly tinged orange as a snap of fingers breaks the quiet. Small candles float in the space of the room now, and they are significantly less pointy at the ends than what Lenalee remembers from her memories of battles with Road.

“It was pretty dark in here, wasn’t it?” Road tries for conversation, but Lenalee does not respond. Instead, she pulls her eyes away and looks at the room once more.

 It looked bigger in the darkness, but it is still no less impressive. The shadows earlier had concealed the edges and limits of the corners and walls, but now with the flames illuminating them, Lenalee could see that the room was about as big as the small bedrooms the finders were given in the Order. The room, including only necessities like a bed and dressing cabinet, was about as barren too. Still, just looking at the gloss and color of the wood, Lenalee can tell the furniture is of much higher quality than most she has seen.

She cautions a glance at Road, and she notices the girl is watching her. Lenalee’s eyes flit about the room as though she is continuing to examine it, but she only focuses on her gazes that sweep across the girl’s figure. She never stops watching her. Lenalee cannot even catch her blinking. She stops her little game, figuring Road knows what she is doing.

“Where am I?” She says instead, looking at Road in the eye. Her heart has calmed down, beating steadily and slowly. The girl beside her blinks finally, lazily like a cat, and she twirls her hand in a circular motion as though she cannot decide where she wants to gesture towards.

“The Ark,” she answers simply, and Lenalee’s heart skips a beat.

“Which Ark?” Lenalee says. Her voice is deadpan though perhaps a bit breathless; anxiety constricts her lungs. Road smiles again and pokes at a candle that floats nearby. It bobbles away from her touch like a bottle tossed into the sea.

“Not Allen’s.” Road watches the moving candle as Lenalee slowly and carefully lets out a deep breath. She closes her eyes. Her lungs compress, expand, compress, expand. She can breathe. Lenalee opens her eyes again (sees Road watching her again in that unnerving way) and notices that she has leaned forward slightly, holding both her hands to her chest. Strands of hair have fallen into her face. Lenalee reaches up to push them back, to tuck them behind her ears. Her hand is touching a stand near her left eye when her movements freeze.

Gray. Her hand is gray. She can only stare at it. The index finger twitches followed by the ring finger. The digits spread apart then come together.

Her hand is gray.

Lenalee glides her fingers past the stands of hair she had been reaching for; they alight on her skin and creep towards her temples. Her spidery fingers find grooves, seven of them, across her flesh and dance upon them as she explores. The marks on her forehead are clean and shapely, no longer the bloody messes from her past week of nightmares.

Road is still watching her. Road is still smiling.

“Welcome home, Wrath.”

* * *

“You should eat something, you know?” A bowl is pushed into Lenalee’s hands, but she does not grasp it. Road continues talking despite the lack of reaction. “You’ll feel better.”

Lenalee would scoff at the girl if she had the energy to do so. Instead, she continues staring at the wall across the room. She has been bedridden since she has arrived here, and endless scenarios run through her mind of what she can do once she is mobile again: kill Road, escape the Ark, save Allen, find Kanda, find Lavi, go home, destroy her Innocence, destroy all the Innocence, kill the Earl, run away, kill herself. Endless scenarios, all swirling through her thoughts, all impossible: she has no weapon, no knowledge, no strategy.

Road watches her all this time. A day or two must have passed by now, maybe more; the room has no windows, and time has a strange flow in the Ark. Though persistent, Road is not patient.

“Come on! Look, the Earl made soup and everything!” The girl’s whiney voice fills the air as it has been wont to do in the past several hours. Lenalee spares a glance, the first in some time, in her direction, and Road snatches at the opportunity to engage. “Ah! You’re back from la-la land. Stop spacing out. Say something!”

Road pushes the bowl against Lenalee’s hands again. Lenalee looks away.

“No! Stop that already!” Road pokes at Lenalee’s cheek as she complains. There’s a shattering of glass as the bowl hits the floor. The sound is accompanied by a crack, and Road reaches up to touch the angry red mark blossoming on her cheek.

“Do not touch me,” Lenalee says, her hand already retreating to rest against her thigh. Road’s laughter fills the room, and Lenalee turns to look at her, eyebrow raised. Road claps her hands.

“Finally! You talked again!”

“I hit you,” Lenalee replies flatly. Road lifts a finger to poke at her again, and Lenalee raises a hand in warning. The girl backs off at the threat and starts talking in her typical sing-song voice despite the slap she just received.

“So, who am I talking to?” Road is looking Lenalee in her eyes, and it strikes the exorcist just how golden this girl’s eyes are. Flecks of brown and yellow mingle in the color, mixing like molten metal.

“Excuse me?” Do her own eyes look like that now?

“You’re not Skinn. You’re too calm for Wrath. Are you still… ah, what’s her name?” Road picks up broken ceramic as she thinks. A sudden snap of fingers accompanies the bright eyes and wide grin that grace the girl’s face. “Oh! Lena… Lena-something, right?”

“Lenalee,” she says, and, after a moment of silence, tacks on, “Lenalee Lee.”

Road hums and picks up the last pieces of the broken bowl.

“You’re like Tyki then.” Goosebumps run down Lenalee’s arms. Neither of them says anything as Road places the shattered pieces on the nearby dresser. When the quiet clinks of their movement settle, Lenalee heaves a deep sigh.

“Don’t compare me to that creep,” she says as she rubs her arms.  There’s something unsettling in the air, and she can’t seem to wash the chill away from her limbs.

“Creep?” A deep voice suddenly breaks the calm in the room, and Lenalee’s face tinges white as she jumps in surprise. Her head whips in the direction of the door to the room where the sound originated.

“Honestly, Tyki, you are kind of creepy,” Road is giggling now, clutching at her stomach in mock exaggeration. “Learn to use doors properly, you creep.”

The man in the doorway groans at his niece’s tease, and a chill runs down Lenalee’s spine. Tyki Mikk: the man she watched nearly kill her friends again and again. The other two in the room seem oblivious to her panic, and Tyki points at her without bothering to look in the exorcist’s direction.

“Millennium wants to see her.”

“Why?” Road asks, and Tyki just shrugs his shoulders. The girl cocks an eyebrow. “You didn’t ask?”

“I didn’t care. I’m just a messenger here.” Tyki is already turning around, ready to leave.

“Hey!” Road shouts at him, stopping him in his tracks. The shout was a bit muffled for Tyki by the shut door that he had already gone through, so he leans back, letting the upper half of his body phase back into the room.

“What?”

“Are you forgetting something?” the petite Noah says, gesturing towards the girl on the bed. Tyki stares at them both for a moment before sighing.

“She’s got two legs, doesn’t she?” Road’s glare is enough to pull Tyki back into the room, but he doesn’t do anything else. Road continues sending the man the evil eye, and he finally steps into motion when she raises a finger into the air: the foretelling of an incoming assault.

“Geez, alright,” Tyki says, walking towards the bed in the room. Lenalee’s heart beats a fraction faster with every step the man takes. By the time he reaches her side, her organs are nearly ready to fly out of her chest and straight to heaven. Lenalee’s terror has always been a silent occasion, an ordeal only for herself and her beating heart, so Tyki is none the wiser to her state of mind. Her blown pupils could perhaps have served as a warning sign to him as he reached to grab her, but the man was never quite the perceptive kind.

Road was fortunate enough to get Lenalee’s slap earlier, but Tyki has the luck to get smacked by a right hook that would have knocked out any normal human. Tyki, being the Noah that he is, instead only feels a sting and, more importantly, a great deal of annoyance.

“Damn, what the hell?” He rubs at his nose for a moment as he backs off from the girl. Looking away from Lenalee and towards Road, he shoots a glare in her direction and resists the urge to stick his tongue out at her. “See? She doesn’t want my help. I’m leaving.”

“Tyki, stop being a jerk.” Road, meanwhile, is perfectly happy with sticking her tongue out at the man. Lenalee clutches her fist to her chest, steadying her breathing. The two in front of her are so playful with each other while she sits in a nightmare; the clash of moods makes her mind swirl. Did she really land a hit on both of these Noah? Why aren’t they retaliating? She can’t understand it or accept it yet, but the confusion lessens her fear by focusing her attention on untangling all these strange threads of thoughts.

“What do you want me to do? She’s being difficult.”

“Lenalee,” Road says as she turns her attention to said girl. “Stop being a jerk too and let Tyki carry you.”

“I can walk,” Lenalee bites out. She is loath to agree with the man next to her about anything, but she’d prefer this over having to touch him for any purpose other than choking him to death. Road’s playfulness with her sets her emotions into a strange, unfamiliar pounding she feels deep in her gut. Her mind hates this, hates how these Noah are interacting so casually with her and how she is reacting, but there’s also a part of her – a part she does not understand at all – that enjoys this, and she hates this part of herself the most.

“You sure about that, girl?” Tyki’s mocking voice stirs the flames in Lenalee’s gut once more, overpowering the confusing twists in her heart. She swings her legs off the bed. She glares at Tyki in defiance.

She meets the floor with a resounding slap, the sound of her skin against the wood making a sound louder than she would prefer it to make. Pain blossoms across her legs and in her skull; she must have hit her head against the bed on her way down.

“What?” she mutters as she rubs at the small bump forming. She tries to get up, but nothing happens. Cold grips her throat. Her legs? Lenalee hesitates before looking down at them. They’re there and look like her normal legs. The girl lets out a shuttering breath and tries to move them again. Nothing. The coldness strangling her spreads to her chest.

Her legs. They aren’t mangled. They still exist. She can feel them. The wood of the floor is cold beneath them. So why? Why aren’t they responding to her will? She can’t remember how to move her legs. They always just listened to her; it was always so natural. They won’t listen now, and she doesn’t know what to do.

A hand waves in front of her face.

“You think she’s in shock?” Road’s voice sounds like it’s near Lenalee. Farther away, Tyki’s voice responds.

“How would I know?” Footsteps. Closer. Her legs still won’t move. She’s being picked up, carried.

“You think the Earl can fix her?” The girlish voice again.

“Probably.” A sigh, close to her. Much too close. Lenalee hates how warm Tyki’s body is. Her legs still won’t move.

* * *

The walk is short - or maybe it isn’t, and Lenalee is just too out of it to notice how long they are moving. As it is, Lenalee is too distracted by her legs to notice her surroundings anyway. Not that there is much to see, aside from swirling blackness and twinkling stars, but maybe she isn’t perceiving that quite right either.

The lighting is better outside of that room. Perhaps it shouldn’t be called lighting since Lenalee notices no sources of light, no blinding dances in her eyes when she moves her head. Nevertheless, she can see with more clarity away from the dim candle light of where she woke up.

Tyki’s body is warm, disgustingly warm, and it’s all she can focus on besides the constant thrum of _my legs, my legs, my legs_ assaulting her mind. She fancies pushing herself away from the man, but she doesn’t possess the strength to do so at the moment, and besides, all she would get from it is another fated meeting and kiss with the coldness of the floor. She always thought the Noah’s bodies should be cold (knows they aren’t though). A memory flashes: she’s moving through solid objects, feeling like something foreign to this world, something useless, and there’s the glint of a sword, and the heat around her disappears.

Kanda isn’t here this time. He won’t come, she knows. Lenalee sees her gray skin, sees the gray of the arms around her, and thinks: we should be cold. Corpses with gray, decaying skin are always cold.

They stop moving, and the warmth against her body is gone as she is placed down onto something. She hears creaking; a chair? She looks down at her legs again, and she notices that they do appear different now. They aren’t exactly normal like she thought they were. The sickly grayness of her skin aside – god, will she really have to look at herself like this? – there’s a pitch blackness creeping up her body, pooling into her skin, leaving bubbles of gray and black where the two colors clash. Her Innocence: it’s doing something to her body. She figures this much, and a memory of that tired boy who Fell at the Black Order ambushes her. His screaming echoes in her ears. She looks up and down her legs, at her feet, at her skin. Tar black. Ash gray.

She does not want this.

A warm hand touches the black. Lenalee slowly takes her gaze away from her legs, instead gazing at the hand and then following the curve of the arm, up to see who this person is. The girl’s eyes lock with those of a tired older man, and after considering her for a moment, he takes his other hand and reaches towards her face. A finger wipes at the tears steaming down her cheeks. The finger isn’t gray. It pauses against her skin, blazing a trail of warmth against the chill as it wipes away the never-ending stream. The hand on her leg, the one pushing against the blackness: she can feel it growing colder and colder. A black hole of despair, taking the warmth from her life: her Innocence is taking her legs. It won’t let her use them. It won’t let this man comfort her.

“I’m sorry,” she’s sobbing now, grasping at the hand, the warm one, against her face. Why is the Innocence punishing her? She’s only ever done what’s been asked of her. She listened and bled and fought. She didn’t choose to be an exorcist, and she cried and bled and cried for it. She didn’t choose to get this gray skin, and she cries and bleeds and cries for it. She feels like a child again, crying and begging and hoping for Komui to save her. He’s not here though, just like last time, and she almost wonders if the time she has had with him has all been a dream – one of those wild, vivid dreams she is prone to having – and that he died with her parents. She closes her eyes. He’ll come back, she thinks, but for now, she finds solace in the kindness of this stranger.

Fingers are combing her hair back, tucking loose strands behind her ears, out of the way of her tears and sweat and snot. The man is talking to her, she notices, calmly and smoothly and constantly repeating his phrases. She opens her eyes, looks at him again. She wonders if he has grandchildren he talks to like this. He nods his head, once, twice, raises his eyebrows at her. She shakes he head, focusing, and listens to the actual words he is saying.

“Your legs are in a worse state than I expected. We might be able to do something about them, but it doesn’t seem like you’re in the right state of mind to deal with those options right now, child.” His hand presses against her forehead. “Are you listening? How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” Lenalee’s voice is steadier than she expected it to be, and she hears a stifled giggle from somewhere behind her. The Noah haven’t left yet then. They’ve been here all this time. Lenalee feels exhausted, though a small piece of her brain is still rational enough to know that no more than a few minutes have gone by.

“Talking at least. Responsive. Better than you were five minutes ago or last week,” the man smiles slightly and takes his hands away from her. “She needs more rest,” he says to someone behind her. The man is standing up now, waving to them, and walking away.

“Wait!” Lenalee calls out, her voice echoing all around. She almost shouts again, thinking the man didn’t hear her, but she notices that he has stopped walking and has titled his body slightly towards her. Her voice sounds quiet when she speaks again, and she hopes he can hear her. “What’s your name?”

“Adam,” he says, and there’s a tickling in Lenalee’s brain.

“Adam,” she repeats, tasting the name on her tongue. There’s something familiar about it, but she can’t quite figure out what. It is as if she has heard a melody that sounds just like one from her childhood, but there’s one accursed note that is not matching up how it should. Before she can ask anything more of the man, she is swiveled around, her heart dropping as she grips the armrests of the chair. Wheels? She tries to glance down to confirm her suspicions, but she is jostled again.

Road is behind her, pushing her now in this chair with wheels back the way they came. Lenalee almost protests, but the exhaustion she feels permeates even her thoughts. She thinks nothing more for the time being about everything that has happened – she is too overwhelmed, too conflicted, too confused about it all to go over it again today. Her tears have stopped as well, and her face feels strange, wet and dirty and red. She reaches a hand up again. Her fingers pause against the grooves in her forehead. They are too real. They should not be real in this swirling blackness around her.

Her mind is spent, and she cannot cry anymore today. Too much has happened at once. She scratches against her forehead, and a drop of blood falls down her face.


	2. Deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Dear God  
> Sorry to disturb you, but  
> I feel that I should be heard loud and clear  
> We all need a big reduction in amount of tears"  
> \- Dear God, Lawless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks wiselavi and SomniumOfLight for leaving reviews :)

Lenalee is sitting in her wheelchair, nursing a headache by a fireplace, when a realization so magnificent assaults her mind that she gasps aloud and grasps at her head. Flames fill her chest, and she shatters the glass in her hand. Adam? Pain sloshes across her forehead like spilled alcohol.

“Ow!” She hears the cry from somewhere below her, but the sound doesn’t register as anything important. Only “Adam” swirls in her ears.

“I think we need to ban you from touching anything breakable,” the voice continues to chirp despite the lack of response from Lenalee. She hears crunching, the shuffling of clothes, clinking, glass falling on glass, and Road pops up from the ground into her field of vision. The girl swipes some shards off Lenalee’s dress – a dress that’s all fancy and frilly and not Lenalee’s style at all – into her open palm. There’s a small trail of red on Road’s cheek – no wound however: already healed.

It all happens with an air of casualness and calm, like a played-out routine where they both know their parts. In a way, Lenalee supposes it has become a routine: these angry flashes of hers, these intrusive memories, Road’s mocking presence. She must have broken five glasses already in the week she’s been captive here. Glancing at the shards in Road’s hand, Lenalee amends her thoughts – six glasses now.

“Go tell Adam then,” Lenalee spits out, projecting as much venom as she can into the name. Road smiles at her anger, and Lenalee wonders what she must look like right now. Is she still that passionate exorcist whose tears stir all near her? Or a hellish Noah, face twisted in hatred and poison and that hideous gray skin? Or perhaps Road sees her as neither of those, but as a frightened girl, confined to a chair with nowhere to go.

Road, with teeth bared in a grin, claps her hands, and all those thoughts are erased from Lenalee’s mind. “She sees me as family,” her voice echoes in her mind, and Lenalee pinches her own hand so hard the skin bleeds. Damn these thoughts.

“You remember!” Road chimes. Lenalee hates this game. It’s always “you remember, you’ll remember soon, you’ll remember later.” She can never get a straight answer from this girl. Road is forcing her to look into herself and accept the Noah memories whether Lenalee likes it or not. Lenalee decides not to dignify the girl with an answer and goes back to staring at the fire again.

“Hey,” Road says, exaggerating the end of the word, letting it hang in the air. She pokes at Lenalee’s check, stirring the charcoal in her gut. “Don’t go back to sulking. Play with me! Pretty please.”

The girl has climbed into her lap now. It is irritating, exactly the way a petulant child bothers a tired adult, but the frustration is exacerbated by the fact that this child isn’t really a child at all. Lenalee looks at her, simmering anger directing her hand, ready to slap the girl, but the sight of her – her childish frame, her pretty face, morphed into a pout with puppy eyes, and cutesy clothes, adorned with bows and lace – stills her movements. The blood on the girl’s cheek is more irritating now than her presence on her lap. Lenalee licks her finger and reaches it to the girl’s face, rubbing away the red.

“Ew, what are you doing?” Road reaches up a hand to push away Lenalee’s fingers, but the ex-exorcist maneuvers her way around it to scrub off the last drops of blood. Road is sticking her tongue out, mocking with a disgusted face, and Lenalee mimics her expression.

“You had something on your face.” Lenalee is suddenly aware of how quaint she is acting, how motherly, how friendly, and she pushes the girl off her lap. Why? Why do these warm feelings always unfurl in her chest now when she looks upon that wretched gray skin? These feelings aren’t hers, aren’t Lenalee’s; she knows this as well as she knows that a heavy mat thrown over a fire puts the darn thing out.

“Now leave me alone,” she hisses at the girl. Lenalee turns back to the flames of the fireplace, reminding herself that this Noah is her enemy, not a child to be coddled. Anger rises in her as she forces herself to recall their fights, the Noah’s murders, the Noah’s Akuma. Lenalee’s head starts hurting: she refocuses her attention, tries to go numb, staring at the fire again, but the heat is still in her gut and her head is still pounding. Is that fire even hers anymore either? It is so much more biting, more potent, more explosive than she has ever felt before.

The door to Road and Lenalee’s quiet little room is kicked open, the unruly bang sending a splitting pain through Lenalee’s temples. She grabs at her head, avoids touching the stigmata she hates sitting on her skin, and glares at the doorway.

“Yo, invitation to dinner,” Tyki says, leaning against the doorframe. He’s dressed in a loose shirt and pants – nothing fancy, but nothing downtrodden either – so he must be in one of his lazy moods. Lenalee has noticed that the man usually bothers to dress up when he’s around the Noah family, probably at the insistence of his brother and the Earl. Road is already hopping off the ground, skipping towards Tyki, but Lenalee stays where she is.

“Open the door like a normal person,” Lenalee stresses the last two words, almost hissing them, and Road laughs at them both as she slides past Tyki into the hallway.

“I’ve already succumbed to one of your demands, princess. Don’t go pushing your luck.” Tyki is grinning, and Lenalee wishes she could move her legs to kick his face as hard as he kicks the door open. She knows he is making this ruckus every day just to spite her, and though Lenalee can’t quite blame him for it – she too would be irritated and act petty after having glass thrown at her – it still pisses her off.

“You can go back to being creepy and walking through doors if it’ll keep you quiet,” she concedes. She probably should have been nicer during her initial request several days ago, but can she be blamed for the fright the man caused her when he just showed up in this room out of nowhere? Really, he was practically asking to be hit in the face with the painful shards of glass that met him. Tyki just waves his hand in response to her.

“Whatever. You coming?”

There’s silence as Lenalee considers the invitation. Tyki’s face is neutral the entire time, and she thinks he probably doesn’t care about her answer either way. Do any of the Noah care? She has only talked to Road and Tyki, but she’s seen others pass through the hallways, glancing at her curiously. Are they not allowed to talk to her? Are they remaining cautious for now? She doesn’t quite know how this family works yet.

Family. There’s that word again. Her brain keeps supplying it to her, but it feels revolting in this context (and yet – even as she thinks that, her heart flutters as though filled with love). She glances at Tyki again and feels nothing: not hatred, not love, not apathy. Just nothing. The warmth fades immediately once she focused on him. Is that her true feeling towards this whole situation? Numbness?

“Ok,” she says, and she sees the man’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. She has declined the invitation to dinner every day since she woke up in this godforsaken place; there hasn’t been any developments to make her change her mind either, so her decision is based entirely on her whim. Tyki, wide eyed and frozen for a second too long, looks absolutely stupid as she wheels past him. Lenalee must not look very graceful either, still not used to maneuvering her chair with her hands, but at least she keeps a straight face while struggling through the motions. She hopes she does, at least.

Tyki eventually comes to his senses and closes the door behind her, starting to walk alongside her. He overtakes her easily with his long strides and takes the lead. Lenalee, although she does not make it obvious or voice it aloud, is glad he stepped ahead since she has no idea where they are going. The tip-tap of Road’s shoes had disappeared before the two of them had even left the room, so there is nobody else to follow. The walk is silent for the most part, barring the creaking of Lenalee’s chair and Tyki’s own footsteps, and it is awkwardly so. Lenalee glances around the hallway, trying to distract herself with anything of interest, but the walls are barren and dark and extremely unappealing to Lenalee’s eye.

“So,” Tyki says after a minute, and Lenalee is less than happy at finding herself grateful for the break in silence. “Why’d you decide to come?”

Lenalee is quiet. Tyki waits and waits, and he thinks maybe she is zoning out again. She’s done that a lot since she’s gotten here, and it makes Tyki wonder how she has managed to survive the war this long.

“Hey.” He starts to reach out a hand to tap her shoulder, but he halts his movement when he hears her voice.

“The Earl wants me to come,” she says, and Tyki just hums in affirmation. “So, I’ll come. I get the feeling you’ll all let me rot in that room if I never accept the invitation.”

“You’re not wrong,” he says. They fall back into silence, and then Tyki’s directing her to turn right. They enter a dining room with an oval table overflowing with food at the center. Chairs surround the main piece of furniture, equally spaced apart except for the noticeable gap at one end of the table. A space for her? She wheels herself over to the gap and finds a table setting, all fancy and proper like the rest situated around the table.

She feels several pairs of eyes watching her; there are less than she expected, but she supposes the lack of a crowd makes sense. The Order was the same way. They’ve all got jobs to do. Except for her. She looks up from the table and glances around the room. Tyki has taken a spot next to Road, several chairs between the pair of them and her. Road is next to the Earl at the other end of the table. Lenalee ignores the way his gaze pierces into her. There’s a boy with light hair she thinks she recognizes, but she can’t find a memory to match the face. A clinking sound to her left catches her attention, and she realizes with a flash the person in attendance right beside her: the Noah who attacked the old Order building, causing so much destruction and death.

If Lenalee still had control of her legs, she would have jumped up and recoiled in disgust and anger. As it is, she merely stares at the woman, drinking what appears to be milk from a wine glass, as Lenalee’s chest boils with emotion.

“Lulubell won’t bother you,” says that boy she noticed earlier, and then he squeaks in rather undignified surprise as he dodges a fork flung at his head.

Lenalee blinks once. Twice. Puts her arm down. Takes a deep breath and realizes she threw the utensil. A chuckle breaks her trance, splashing water against the fire of anger that consumed her mind in those passing seconds.

“What made you come to dinner today, Wrath?” The Earl’s eyes are twinkling at her, and she wonders where that old man went, replaced by this fat suit. She considers throwing her knife at him, but before she can even convince herself of the common-sense reason to not throw a dinner knife at the Millennium Earl, that boy is speaking up again, this time addressing the man at the head of the table.

“I don’t think she wants to be called that, Earl.” What brilliant deductive reasoning, she thinks, giving a dull-eyed stare at the boy.

“By the way,” he adds on, looking at Lenalee again. “My name is Wisely. Please stop thinking so loudly.”

“Excuse me?” She starts, but Tyki is already jumping into the conversation.

“He’s an asshole; just ignore him.” Road starts giggling at that, and Wisely has the sense to look offended at the remark. Before he can shoot back with a scathing reply of his own, the Earl is shushing them.

“Children, children.” His words sound like a grade school teacher lecturing his students, and Lenalee can’t tell if she finds his attitude to be paternal or patronizing. “Let our new sibling introduce herself.”

She realizes they are staring at her, waiting for her response. Her voice is stilted when she speaks.

“Lenalee,” she says. They are still staring at her. What else do they want? She’s not here to be friends with everyone.

“Then why are you here?” Wisely dares to talk again. Lenalee senses a tone of genuine curiosity in his voice rather than the mocking tone she expected. She considers her reasons for coming today before speaking. She needs to watch her words.

“You want me here. You won’t let me do anything until I play along. So,” she pauses, running her hands across her lap, smoothing out the ruffles in her dress (she really hopes she can get some different clothes eventually). She shrugs and looks at the Earl. “Here I am.”

“Here you are,” he agrees. Lulubell’s knife clinks against a plate as she eats her meal, completely unconcerned with the ongoing conversation, and Lenalee must force herself to not turn her head from the Earl to observe this odd woman. It’s quiet in this dining room after the Earl shushed them all, and the clinking of the knife is nearly silent, but it is loud enough to fray at Lenalee’s senses. She feels another headache forming, right behind her left eyebrow, and she asks the question that has been nagging at her since she gained some sense in this damned Ark.

“What do you want from me?”

“You’re part of the family now.” Lenalee’s eyebrows jump upwards as she turns her head toward Road, not expecting the little Noah to be the one to answer. Road shoots her a playful grin, the same kind as the one she shows when she talks to her at the fireplace. “We just want you here whether you’re pleasant or not.”

(“And not there – not with the Exorcists and Innocence” is left unsaid.)

“I can’t do this – can’t be a part of this,” Lenalee says. She wonders what they’ll do to her. They haven’t been violent yet – she laughs humorlessly in her head at that thought – so she suspects they’ll simply lock her away like they have so far. She isn’t expecting the Earl to say what he does.

“Well, what do _you_ want?”

She blinks; then, she glares at the man. What does it matter? She supposes it wouldn’t hurt to humor him. She doesn’t even have to think twice about her answer anyway.

“I want my friends to be safe. I want you to stop hurting them.”

The Earl considers her words. He doesn’t look surprised, and Lenalee wonders if he was expecting this from her like she’s just another dumb, predictable human. Gray skin catches her eye in the corner of her vision – Road’s hand reaching up to her petite face, swiping that unruly, spiky hair away from her eyes – and she reminds herself: not human. Not normal. Not anymore.

“Girl,” her attention is focused squarely back on the Earl. “Do you think we’re hurting your friends intentionally?”

“Of course.” She almost laughs at the absurdity of the question.

“We’re after the Innocence, not your friends.”

“You attack them. You kill them.” She spits her words, glaring at all the beings before her and especially at Tyki when she says the last bit. He’s been quiet during most of these exchanges, minding his own business, and he has the sense to break eye contact, sliding his gaze away from her, after she makes her accusations. The Earl brings her attention back to himself, speaking in that calm and fatherly voice that is beginning to flare at her emotions.

“We have to because they have Innocence. Without the Innocence, we’d have no reason to touch your friends.” Almost as an afterthought, the Earl adds, “Until the finale, of course.”

An unnatural hatred burns Lenalee’s guts at the mention of Innocence, and her legs start to ache. She has always hated God, but never this deeply and harshly. She hates him for putting her friends in these suicidal, disgusting situations where they sacrifice their lives every day. Komui, Kanda, Lavi, Miranda, Timothy, Allen, Johnny – everyone, all her friends, they all deserve to live normal, beautiful lives.

“Then they’d just be victims of Akuma.”

“The Akuma are more than you think they are.”

“They’d still be dead.”

“Maybe so. Isn’t that better than the suffering your God makes them endure?”

Her legs are weighing her down. She wishes she could cut them off in that instant. Her brain doesn’t recoil at the Earl’s words, and she can’t tell if she believes them herself or if the Noah memories are poisoning her. Something is nagging her brain, a worm wriggling in the back, burrowing through to her frontal lobe. An idea blooms inside her, and its prickly thorns force her to speak forbidden thoughts.

“You said the Innocence is what you want.”

“Yes.”

“So,” she pauses and licks at her lips quickly. They are dry but not cracking. She looks around, noticing the lack of blemishes on the faces around her. Will she ever wake up again with the taste of blood on her lips? Before she dies, that is. She takes a deep breath. An epiphany is unfolding before her eyes. A dark, ugly, hopeful dream. “If they lose their Innocence, then you don’t have to touch them.”

The Earl stays silent for a moment, looking her over, understanding her proposition.

“I suppose so.”

She breathes deeply again and holds the air in her lungs. She imagines the coolness of the air mixing with the emotions boiling inside her, slowly bring them down to a simmering, manageable mess she can handle. It’s still too much. The air is not enough. She runs her hands against the wheels at her sides, rolling herself backwards away from the table’s edge. She has to leave and calm down on her own. She can’t look at these people right now. She can’t look at that gray skin and golden eyes.

As she rolls away, back into the hallway, she hears a confused voice.

“Earl?” It’s Tyki, quiet now as he’s still in the dining room and she’s putting more and more distance between them. She wonders if he’ll still be going on missions. Knowing his body count, he seems to be a favorite of the Earl’s. She hears one last thing before she’s finally out of ear-shot.

“Tyki-pon, hush, you haven’t eaten yet. Road, you too. Get some food before it gets cold."


	3. Galvanism

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have... forgotten... that I was in the middle of posting this story. Apologies.

It’s too hot and too hard to breathe. Lightning crackles up Lenalee’s arms; she bites back a scream of pain. She squints through her exertion, glancing for a moment at her arms before refocusing on her target. She sees blood welling up, her veins charred and blackened, her muscles shriveling under the intense fire; then, her gray skin knits over the mess, and the lightning is shooting forward. Road takes a step to the left. Her hair on the right side of her face get singed at the ends when the attack shoots past her, but her smile betrays the fact that she let it happen.

“Hm,” Road muses, clapping her hands together for dramatic effect. “I give that one a five out of ten. Much better than the last one, but still, you gotta move faster and put more ‘oomf!’ into it. You know?”

Lenalee is gasping for breath, hunched over her lap, and gripping the arm rests of her chair to keep herself upright. Still, some of Road’s words register in her brain. What the hell does she mean by “oomf?”

“H-” She gasps again, trying to get more air before trying to speak again. Her chest burns. Her arms burn. Her legs burn, even as they sit useless below her. “How?” Lenalee finally manages, wiping the sweat from her face with her forearm. She’s in pain, but she’s glad to finally be doing something active, finally proving she’s not defenseless without her Innocence.

“Um,” Road drawls out the hum of the word, twirling a silent Lero as she thinks. How did Skinn always use his power? She just remembers him grunting and growling a lot.

“Get angry?” she tries, but Lenalee doesn’t reply. Her shuttering breathes aren’t audible to the petite Noah any longer, and she walks up to the wheelchair, ignoring the scorch marks surrounding the thing.

“Are you okay?” She asks, poking at the ex-exorcist’s check. The girl’s head lulls to the side, and Road sees that she has passed out. Too much effort too soon, she supposes. They’ll just have to train more another day. She goes to push the wheelchair to take Lenalee to her room, but the chair is heavier than it looks, and Road doesn’t look forward to physical exercise.

She calls up one of her doors, intent on finding Tyki and nagging him into helping her.

* * *

Lenalee wakes up in her bed. The room she woke up in the first time she was taken to the Ark is where she always wakes up now. She groans and rubs at her eyes. Again; just like the other day.

She looks at her skin and notices it has fallen gray again, sending disgust through her gut. The tightening of her core is not as intense and as visceral of a reaction as the first time she awakened, but she still despises seeing that color on her flesh. Road says she’ll get used to it in time. Road has been teaching her how to turn it to a natural color again to blend in with normal society, but it is difficult for Lenalee to keep it up for long. She concentrates on her hand, willing the color to change; a paleness creeps up her fingers, stuttering along the way. There’s a moment where it all drops to gray again, and she refocuses herself, closing her eyes. When she opens them, her hand is how she remembers it has always been.

“Well, look who’s –” The sassy comment is interrupted by a choking noise when Lenalee twists and sends her fist soaring into the man’s gut. Tyki’s pain makes her feel better, and she smiles at Road’s laughter. Those two are always around her; it makes her wonder if the Earl has assigned them to watch her or if they stick around by their own choice. Road is often smiling and talking to her. She takes every chance she gets to play with Lenalee’s growing hair and tie ribbons into it, and Lenalee lets her because she is quiet and gentle in those moments. Lenalee thinks this might be what it’s like to have a sister, if she didn’t always think about the blood on the girl’s hands.

Tyki is different. She is always angry when looking at him. While Road has done horrible things and is a part of this horrid family, she has not taken the life of anyone close to Lenalee. Perhaps it is hypocritical to care so much more about wrongs done to her loved ones over the wrongs done to others, but Lenalee has never claimed to be virtuous. With Tyki, it is personal. Suman, Yeegar, Chaker, Kazaana. Almost Allen. Her chest boils just thinking about them.

And yet. She cannot bring herself to want him dead anymore and cannot even think about hurting Road. Even hating Tyki goes against the fibers of her heart and skin. She rubs at the stigmata on her forehead, the smooth grooves carved there. The Noah memory within her is carving into her brain and into her heart just like her skin.

Why does Tyki stick around? She knows he has some sick fascination with living with humans from what she has heard from Allen and heard from the man himself during their fight in Edo. Is this another game for him? She goes to punch him again, and he side steps out of the way.

“Can you stop that already?” he asks, irritated, and Lenalee just glares at him. Lenalee’s not sure if she wants him to leave. On the one hand, she wouldn’t have to see his stupid face again, but on the other hand, she wouldn’t be able to hit him anymore – and she knows her punches hurt even a Noah now with her newfound strength.

“Maybe Lenalee should train with Tyki,” Road tosses out and is immediately met with an incredulous “why?” from Lenalee and a “hell no” from Tyki.

“You actually want to hurt him, so maybe you’ll try harder to hit him than you do with me! It’d be very fun to watch too.” Road is grinning at the thought, and that smile sends a pleasant lightness to Lenalee’s mind. She thinks of Komui’s smile, wondering if she’ll see it again.

“I don’t see why we’re bothering with training anyway,” Tyki says, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. “What with her legs fucked up like that.”

“The Earl’s working on that,” Road says. Tyki has lit up his smoke, and Lenalee’s throat is already itching, begging her to cough. She hates the way the smoke stings at her eyes, but if she complains about it, Tyki will smoke the whole pack just to mess with her. She stays silent on the topic of conversation, and not only because she doesn’t want to inhale more smoke. Regrettably, she also agrees with Tyki. If anyone gets close to her, they can knock her out far too easily; her entire fighting strategy throughout her time as an exorcist was based on her speed and leg work, and she has neither of those now.

A knock comes from the door. Road and Tyki look at each other with a questioning gaze, not expecting this visit. The door opens before either of them can step forward, and Lulubell comes in.

“The Earl has something he wants to show you,” she says in that monotone voice of hers. Hearing this woman speak sends a chill down Lenalee’s spine. There is never any emotion in her voice. Her face is neutral and betrays nothing of her inner thoughts – no twitches of her lips, no lingering gazes, or quick blinks. She is like an overpowered level one Akuma, loyal to the Earl with no heart or soul.

“We’ll be right there, Lulu,” Road waves her off. The woman leaves the room to wait outside the door. Only after she leaves Lenalee’s vision does Lenalee swing her body into the wheelchair Road has pushed beside her bed.

“Has she always been like that?” Lenalee asks, not caring if the woman is in ear-shot.

“Like what?” Road goes doe-eyed at her question, and Lenalee can’t tell if she’s playing around with her or not. Lenalee stares at her, trying to see the truth behind her glimmering eyes. Tyki takes their silence as his chance to jump into the conversation.

“Creepy and quiet? Yeah, that’s always been the Lulubell I’ve known.”

“She gets all cute with the Earl though!”

“In that cat form? Nah, still creepy, Road.”

“It’s creepier how you dress up like a homeless man and play around outside the Ark,” Lulubell’s voice outside the room makes Lenalee jump, but Road laughs. “You should act your age and set an example for the twins and Wisely.”

The clack of Lulubell’s shoes sounds in the hallway and grows quieter with each passing second. Lenalee was not expecting to be left behind, so she rushes with pushing her wheels to catch up to the lady while Road just skips along on her merry way. Lulubell’s comment has left Lenalee surprised, but not nearly as dumbfounded as Tyki. He’s still in the room, staring at the doorway.

“You should act like your own species,” he grumbles to nobody since everyone has already left him behind. He crushes his cigarette underneath his shoe and sets off at a slow pace, not quite sure where his destination is since all the girls are out of sight.

* * *

They are somewhere in France if Lenalee must guess the country. It is noisy here with the bustle of city life, and the language in the air is harsh and choking. People have told her French is the language of romance, but she has never been particularly attracted to the sound of it. She prefers the melody of her native Chinese, but she learned in the past that hers is an unpopular opinion in the European branch of the Order.

People stare at her as she passes through the crowd in her wheelchair, but she doesn’t pay them any mind. She is used to catching attention; the silver and shine of her Exorcist uniform was designed to draw eyes like this. It is a bit difficult to follow Lulubell disappearing into the crowd with her brisk steps, but Road is there to guide her when she thinks she has lost her path. She’s surrounded by strangers, and as she’s sweeping her eyes across the crowd looking for a familiar blonde pony-tail to go after but only finding foreign faces, Road’s little hands will reach out from the mass of bodies and beckon her forth.

They are slowing down now, and she notices that they have joined a crowd of people. There seems to be something happening at the center of the crowd, but there are too many bodies towering over her and blocking her vision. Road, trying to make room for Lenalee and her wheelchair, nudges and, when they refuse to move, shoves at people, accompanied by Lenalee’s “sorry!” ringing through the air. When they are past the jumble of the crowd and stand at the edge of the inner ring of spectators, a scientific demonstration of some sort comes into view. At the same moment Lenalee finally has sight of something that isn’t the lower half of a mass of bodies, she notices Adam at the opposite side of the crowd.

Adam. He is in his human skin – or is that his body, and the Earl is the skin? It would make more sense for the human body to be the original form since the Earl resembles nothing else natural on this Earth, but Lenalee can’t imagine the Earl as a being residing in a human body. That much evil couldn’t possibly be contained in such a kind looking man. Then again, haven’t regular men caused her all the suffering and pain she has felt most of her life?

Movement catches her attention, and the Earl is pointing to the strange presentation taking place before them. “Watch,” his finger says, and Lenalee listens to the silent message because that is why she is here at all.

A man, a southern Italian perhaps – slightly different from the majority of the crowd with his darker hair and skin but still noticeably European – has set up a table mounted with strange metal gadgets. Lenalee cannot understand what he is saying, his voice harsh and fast in a language unfamiliar to her ears, but he gestures a lot to the moving parts on his table and holds up a frog. The creature still shines with moisture and appears whole and unharmed. The longer one gazes upon it as the man talks, however, the more a simple fact becomes known. The stiff limbs, the lack of motion, the careless way the man handles the frog; all these signs add up to one conclusion: the poor animal is dead. The fact doesn’t disturb the crowd, though a rare few spectators in the group frown at the realization. The man sets the dead animal down onto a metal plate and begins attaching wires to the body, poking and prodding the tortured, slimy flesh. The crowd has hushed, anticipating whatever he is about to do.

A spark, and then it happens: the legs of the frog start twitching, kicking, flailing about; Lenalee frowns, and the silly, frightening image of animal Akuma flitters through her thoughts. A lady somewhere in the crowd gasps, but the sound is drowned out by polite clapping. The man at the center messes with his machines a bit, pulls out the wires from the frog, and, while holding out a hat, entertains a conversation with another man in the crowd. The legs of the dead animal have stopped moving.

Lenalee is staring at the set-up, ignoring the man still captivating much of the audience’s attention. The moving parts, the flash of a spark; her eyebrows furrow as she replays the previous scene in her head. Johnny explained something once to her late one night when they were struggling to stay awake and finding any excuse to do so. It was some nonsense about gears and wires and currents, all inspired by a flash of lightning outside the window they were both gazing out of. She hadn’t paid much attention to his words at the time, the content of them meaning less than his presence that dreary night.

Electricity moved the dead legs? That is her guess. She looks beyond the table, looking for the Earl in the crowd, but her search is cut short when a flashy movement near her catches her eye. Road’s bright red skirt has broken apart from the crowd. The girl is sneaking towards the table at the center. There’s a shine in her eye, certainly up to some sort of mischief, and Lenalee reaches forward, practically toppling out of her chair to grab at the girl’s arm and drag her back.

“Let’s go, Road,” Lenalee whispers, exasperated at the girl’s childishness. Lenalee is already having enough trouble attempting to turn herself around in the crowd, and now she must babysit Road too. Road whines something about wanting to show the frog to Wisely, but she acquiesces to Lenalee’s request nonetheless. Lenalee scans the crowd at they make their way out of it, no easier than it was to fight their way to the center earlier. There is still no sign of the Earl.

Fine. Good. She doesn’t need him to approve her idea; she has an experiment to try out.

* * *

An intense pressure behind the eyes and the churning deep in her gut: both signs foretelling a torrent of tears assault Lenalee through her training. She’s gasping, hunched over, grasping her hands uselessly against her chest. There’s a shock through her body, and hot liquid spills over her face, burning tracks down her cheeks. She waits for that familiar metallic taste to fill her mouth, but instead she tastes salt.

Lightning sears through her legs, and the dirt underneath her fingernails is foreign, all cold and gritty and tearing her skin. The earth underneath her hands is as unrelenting as the pain, and she must have fallen because she remembers standing just moments ago. Standing. She might smile if she wasn’t fighting past the fire burning her.

A hand, pulling sticky strands of hair away from her eyes, strokes her head. It’s a familiar, comforting gesture at this point. An equally soothing voice sings in enthusiasm at odds with the girl’s pain.

“Everyone’s going to be so impressed,” Road says and continues her petting. Lenalee lets out a gasp that might have been a laugh in other circumstances. There’s still too much pain for her to respond like herself. Still, she is healing. She needs a little bit more time and some more gasps and tears, and then she’ll be fine. If she’s going to be stuck in this damnable gray body, then she can at least appreciate how relentless and stubborn it is. Her broken skin is stitching itself together with blood already drying itself on the new flesh.

The lightning in her body subsides to a fire, then to licking flames, then to a smolder. Her gasps slow and quiet, and soon after even her tears dry. Road, humming a happy little tune, stays by her side all the while. A beat of four notes, up, up, down, down, repeats over and over, and the pain slides away with each held hum.

Up, up. Down, down. High, low.

After an amount of time Lenalee cannot even fathom to guess, the ex-exorcist sits up and looks at her limp legs. The skin is back to that cold blackness, and she can’t decide whether she likes it better like this or when it was burned and torn to the bone. She reaches a hand out to touch them, and they are ice cold and hard like stone underneath her soft fingers.

Road pokes Lenalee’s cheek.

“Ready for round thirty-two?” The younger girl grins, eyes wild and playful. Lenalee stares at the girl, assaulted in her heart by a warm affection for Road’s smile. She flails back against the ground with a groan, covering her eyes against the setting sun. She must look disgusting, covered in char and dirt and the remnants of salty tears and slick blood.

“I think I’m done for today, Road,” she sighs.

“Don’t blame ya,” the girl laughs, collapsing beside her. “You want me to call Tyki or Lulubell to carry you back? You might not have noticed but you kinda incinerated your chair.”

Lenalee blinks and turns her head to look at Road. “Did I really?”

“Yup.”

Will she be bedridden until a replacement can be made? Lenalee shakes her head and flings the thought off her mind. Surely the Earl has a spare around somewhere. It’s calm in these woods with Road, and she doesn’t want to spoil the moment with negative thoughts.  Leaves rustle in the wind, carried along with the chirps and cries of insects. The girl beside her is fiddling with a stick, breaking it into halves over and over again.

 “So, want me to call someone?” Road prompts, thinking perhaps Lenalee’s mind has gone a bit haywire. It has, but she has not forgotten the question. Lenalee sighs. She is very tired and for the time being has forgotten her troubles, laying in the dirt surrounded by melodies of nature.

“Not yet, Road,” She says, a request hidden in her statement. Road says nothing, and they lay there until the lightning bugs arrive and twinkle like the stars above them.


	4. Mercy

Lenalee closes her eyes and breathes in the ocean air. The scent fills her lungs, the salt making her feel fresh and light. Her hair is pushed back by the wind. It whips back with every gust, and the weight of the combined strands reminds Lenalee that she should cut it soon. She should do it before she gets back to the Ark, so that Road doesn’t have a chance to whine in her ear about it enough to make her change her mind.

Missions are not so different from what she is used to from her work at the Order. Here, like there, she spends some hours investigating and some hours admiring her surroundings, always wary and cautious but daring to enjoy what she can of her circumstances. Lenalee wishes she could step forward and feel the sand against her toes. As it is, she does not want to push her luck with Lulubell. The woman was announced to be her partner for the mission, though both of the women know she is really more of a babysitter, making sure that Lenalee doesn’t dart at her first chance of freedom or get injured in her state.

She could tell the woman was not inclined to take her this close to the shore in the first place. Lulubell didn’t say anything against going when Lenalee mentioned how pretty the ocean was, but Lenalee saw the hesitation in her step and suspects the woman is the kind of person who dislikes both sand and the idea of taking a detour. She’s always staying clean and proper and follows orders directly and without question.

“It’s nice here. Portugal is pretty,” Lenalee says. Crashing waves answer her. “Do you like the beach, Lulubell?”

“No,” the woman says. Lenalee waits for more of an explanation but gets nothing. This trip has turned up nothing with regards to Innocence, and while Lenalee can’t force herself to feel one way or another about it, she assumes the older Noah is at least a little upset. Lulubell has uttered a total of three sentences to her this entire trip. Lenalee would normally disregard the disdain of a Noah, but she must admit that the woman’s silence has been more than a bit unnerving.

“Are you always this quiet?” Lenalee asks. She hopes to coax Lulubell into conversation and learn something about her. It is strange to be in such proximity to someone who was once her enemy and is now a reluctant ally and yet have absolutely no knowledge about the person besides superficial details like her hair color and the way she walks. Lenalee wonders if this emotionless and quiet person is just the way the woman is or if this silent treatment has more to do with who Lenalee is.

“Yes,” Lulubell says and again falls back into silence.

Lenalee decides she is fine with that. The crashing of the water is repetitive, and the back and forth motion of the shoreline lulls her to a calm. She watches the waves, listens to them, and breathes in. The setting sun is warm against her skin. Her eyes are fluttering to a close when she is surprised awake by Lulubell’s voice.

“Have you been sleeping well?” She asks, and then, almost as if in explanation, casually tacks on, “the Earl told us to be nice to you.”

Lenalee rubs at her forehead, willing away the headache she feels coming on with just the thought of sleep. She is surprised to feel the bumps of stigmata against her skin, and when she takes her hand away from her head she sees gray. She is not as disgusted at the sight as she once was. In fact, she does not feel disgusted at all. She notes her own reaction with a raise of her eyebrows. It has become a simple reality for her like the way her heart beats a little slower now and how she can no longer walk without drastic measures. She looks at her hand a little longer. She feels a prickling at the back of her neck; Lulubell must be watching her still, eyes trained on her every move. Her skin must have faded from its normal human color when she started nodding off. She’s been so tired lately.

“No,” she finally answers Lulubell. She's not sure if she should be honest with the woman, but something in Lenalee's heart compells her to tell the truth anyway. “I’ve been having nightmares.”

“About what?” Lulubell speaks in a monotone voice. Such an emotionless voice would ordinarily unsettle Lenalee, but it feels right to be coming from Lulubell. A softer voice, gentle and sweet, would have been a warning sign: of deceit, of treachery. That’s how Lulubell has always been – the thought swirls through the girl’s brain even though she’s only known the woman for a few months. Lenalee has grown used to these intruding, floaty thoughts, and she figures she’ll stop fighting the harmless ones that come to her.

“I don’t really know,” Lenalee says, not because she cannot remember the dreams but because she does not know how to describe them. They are flashes of scenes, fragments of stories: of pain, of tragedy, of fire. Blood showers her at night, and she wakes up wanting to scream, always angry. So, so angry. She can never stop the blood and the pain. Sometimes, she dreams of the end, of an apocalypse, with ruins everywhere and her atop them, all alone with nothing to do but cry and scream.

Lenalee jumps when she feels warm fingers on her forehead. Lulubell, hands pressed against the girl’s head, has reached her arms around from behind Lenalee. The girl holds her breath, wondering what she is doing. The fingers start moving, rubbing her temples in soothing circles.

“You should talk to Road about these dreams,” Lulubell says, tracing Lenalee’s stigmata with her fingers. “She can help.”

Lenalee hums in response, vaguely uncomfortable but not wanting to cause tension between them, and Lulubell continues with her massage. Lenalee does not know if Lulubell feels any warmth towards her outside of their feelings as Noah, but she accepts the touches as a truce of sorts.

* * *

Tyki is with them the next day.

“Why am I here?” he says as soon as he finds them in town, outside of one of the taller churches. Lenalee notices Lulubell scrunch up her nose slightly as the man walks up, smoking a cigarette. Signs of either a sensitive nose or distaste towards him. Tyki is dressed a bit trashy at the moment, his torn and stitched pants having seen better days, so it may be the latter case. At least he’s ditched those weird glasses he wore in the Ark before.

“We need you to ask people about any ghosts they’ve seen,” Lulubell says.

“Ghosts?” He blows smoke out as he speaks, and Lenalee finds that for the first time since she’s been wheelchair-bound, she’s glad that she is not at eye height with those around her. The townspeople passing by do not envy Lulubell’s face full of smoke either.

“To see if there’s really any Innocence around here.” The woman holds her cool, not even lifting a hand to wave away the smoke.

“Isn’t that your job right now?”

“Lenalee and I have scouted the area and found nothing.”

“So what do you need me for?”

“To talk to people and ask them questions.”

“Right,” Tyki sighs and scratches his head, getting tired of the conversation. “Why can’t you do that? Why are you telling me to do it?”

“Why are you being difficult?” Lulubell says, still monotone as ever. Tyki raises his eyebrow and says nothing. He breathes out smoke, not caring about the way it blows directly into Lulubell’s face again. Lulubell’s eye twitches for a fraction of a second.

“We don’t speak Portuguese,” Lenalee jumps into the conversation, and the way Tyki and Lulubell both suddenly look down and notice her makes her feel awkward. It reminds her of when she was a child at the Order: helpless with far more powerful men staring down at her.

“What?” Tyki asks. Lenalee has noticed that he’s not very good at connecting dots himself. She wouldn’t exactly call him stupid, but Tyki can be a bit of an airhead. The thought loosens her stiff limbs, reminding her that she’s not dealing with higher ups at the Order right now. It’s just idiot Tyki. Dangerous and potentially violent Tyki, but idiot Tyki nonetheless.

“We can’t speak Portuguese, so we can’t talk to the people here. You can speak it though, right?” She explains, and Tyki shrugs his shoulders.

“Sure. Why didn’t I get this mission in the first place?”

“You were off in China when we got the information. The Earl was hoping we could find the Innocence without asking around, but there might not be any at all here. We need you to ask around to make sure we didn’t miss anything.”

“Right.” The man drops his cigarette and crushes it with his heel. “Where do I start?”

Lenalee points at the church beside them, and Lulubell supplies the information he needs.

“A priest and several nuns have been reporting that they’ve been seeing glowing green ghosts around here. Ask them about it.”

Tyki looks up at the spires of the black building. Lenalee follows his gaze, but she sees nothing special about the dramatic building, and she hopes that he’ll find nothing interesting inside.

* * *

“It all sounds like bullshit,” Tyki says when he meets with them a few hours later at a café. Lenalee sighs with relief into her cup of tea as Tyki slides into a chair at their table. Lulubell stares at her for a moment, perhaps attempting to discern her loyalties, before her attention is dragged away by Tyki calling over a waitress and ordering a beer.

“I’m sorry, sir. We don’t sell alcohol here,” the mousey waitress says, arms crossed against her chest. She’s a petite girl and has her brown locks of hair neatly pulled back in a braid.

“What the hell kind of place is this?” Tyki grumbles and the waitress steps back a bit. Lenalee wonders if she’d act the same way with Tyki dressed like a nobleman. Would she be friendly and chuckle instead of putting distance between them? Maybe; maybe not. The way the man holds himself can be intimidating to a slight woman like her no matter what he looks like. Despite all the differences in his two lives, he’s still a predator in both work jeans and satin suits.

“Just order milk and be done with it,” Lulubell says.

“Not everyone’s a damn cat lady like you.” Tyki waves away the waitress, and she scampers away, relieved to not have to serve him. Lulubell sips at her drink. Lenalee feels awkward in this company and wants to get back to the Ark where she can sulk in peace, so she turns her body to face Tyki.

“So, you said the ghost stories are, uh - ” Lenalee stumbles in her words, not used to cursing and with no intention of starting. “The ghost stories have no basis?”

“Right, yeah. Total bullshit. They’re just some religious freaks in an old building that makes a lot of noises. Nothing Innocence related. Probably.”

Lulubell hums in thought. She has never indicated that she’s a big fan of Tyki, but she seems to trust his judgement in this situation. Tyki is better at interacting with normal humans than most of the Noah, and he has a good track record for destroying Innocence despite his failures with Allen Walker.

“This was a waste of time,” Lulubell concludes.

“Yup,” Lenalee nods her head, and both of them take another sip of their drinks. Neither appear bothered by the results of their investigation, but Lenalee suspects that Lulubell must be disappointed underneath that emotionless mask. From what she’s seen, the woman always carries out the Earl’s orders to the best of her abilities; nothing like the lazy bum next to them.

“Well, let’s go home then,” Tyki says, already standing up.

“One moment. I’ll look around one last time tomorrow when it’s light outside,” Lulubell says, staying seated with no intention of moving. It’s illogical to stay another night; they all know that. None of them doubt Tyki’s findings at the church. Lulubell craves to bring results to the Earl, Lenalee realizes, and she doesn’t want to go back empty-handed. She needs to double check everything for her own peace of mind and to provide a full and proper report to the Earl later.

"I want the Earl to know that we looked everywhere before leaving," Lulubell says as though she can read Lenalee's mind. Tyki shifts from one foot to the other.

"The Earl knows you do your best, Lulu," he says casually, and Lenalee sees that almost imperceptible eye twitch on the woman's face again.

"Do not call me that."

"I'll help Lulubell look tomorrow," Lenalee says, cutting that little argument at the bud before it can bloom into a nonsense back-and-forth between the two. Tyki looks at her, then at Lulubell, then back at her. He waves his hand and starts to walk away.

"See you later, I guess."

"Tyki, wait."

"What is it now?"

"There's something I want to ask you about," Lenalee says, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. She's already pushing her wheelchair away from the table, ready to follow Tyki out the door. 

"What is it?" He says, and Lenalee glances back towards Lulubell. The woman is watching them with those big and unnerving cat eyes of hers. It would be better to not bring this up in front of the other Noah. Lenalee does not know how the others feel about Tyki's activities.

“Let's talk outside; I feel stuffy in here and you look itching to leave,” she says casually as she rolls herself towards the exit. Tyki narrows his eyes but follows her nonetheless. Lulubell ignores them and focuses on her drink. Lenalee sends a silent thank you in her mind to the woman for not being difficult.

When they are outside, Lenalee turns to look at Tyki but doesn't say anything right away. They travel down the street, passing children running by and people going about their everyday lives. The sun is bright today, beating down on everyone's scalps. Everyone outside seems to be rushing, hoping to escape to a shaded building. After a minute, Tyki leans against a building's wall in full sunlight near the sidewalk and pulls out a cigarette.

“Alright, talk then,” he says, lighting his smoke. Lenalee looks around before speaking, thinking about how she wants to word her questions and thoughts. Her attention is drawn away by laughter, and she sees a young boy and girl playing nearby. They toss pebbles, small enough to be harmless but big enough to sting, at each other. The girl is running up and down the sidewalk and pretends to trip when the boy begins to fall behind. Normally a sight like this would make her smile. The sounds of happiness and innocence and fun: this is what she is protecting.

This is what she _was_ protecting. She feels numb at the thought, for more reasons than she wishes she could imagine. The two children are dressed in dirty clothes. The boy has a limp. The girl has bruises on her arms. Where will they be in ten years? In five? They will be miserable. Is this one moment of happiness worth their lifetime of suffering? Her dreams surface in her mind, reminding her of all the terrible things in life, all the suffering and pain that enrages her. Abuse and hunger and betrayal and violence. Her heart is beating faster, faster - she takes a deep breath, closes her eyes, attempts to calm herself.

Breathe.

“How do you do this?” she says through gritted teeth finally. She opens her eyes and sees that Tyki has a grin on his face. What a bastard. Does he enjoy her moments of weakness like this? She can't wait to find him like this, to laugh at him when he is in pain and suffering. Venom grips her heart for an instant and she wants him to suffer deeply and horrendously, crying for mercy.

Lenalee hates herself more than that poison eating at her. She has never been one to enjoy suffering. She needs to be stronger. These sadistic thoughts cannot invade her like this.

"Do what?" Tyki says, still grinning, either oblivious to the emotions swirling in the girl or enjoying them immensely. Lenalee covers her face, willing herself to calm down, calm down, calm down.

"Allen told me about your human friends. Two men and a boy, right? How do you live with yourself? Talking with them and cherishing them one day and then enjoying their suffering and plans for death the next. Isn't one of them a little boy? How do you do that? I can't imagine it." Tears gather in the corners of Lenalee's eyes, and she blinks furiously to keep them at bay. She hates how emotional this makes her. She did not want this conversation to end with her crying. She just needs to know a way to deal with these feelings pulling her under.

Tyki hums for a moment in thought.

“I don't really think about it,” he says. Lenalee's heart drops to her gut like a cold stone.

“Aren't they your friends?”

"Of course," Tyki says, and - damn him to Hell, Lenalee thinks - he genuinely looks confused by her glassy-eyed stare. 

"You're evil," she says. No other explanation could make her understand how he could just not care.

"What does that have to do with them?"

"How can you not think about them when you're killing people?" Lenalee's voice is getting shaky again. She can't understand him at all. She wants to explode; she feels the hot fingers of hatred and anger and disgust crawling up the inside of her throat. 

"They don't matter when I'm doing that," Tyki says like it's the most obvious statement ever. Lenalee's mind goes blissfully blank for a moment, unsure of what she could say to a man like this. It's silent between them for a minute, and then Lenalee turns her wheelchair around. Tyki has been around the Ark since she woke up. She imagines that boy Allen described to her in her mind: the quiet one who tried to offer Allen a gift and held Tyki's hand. They have a cruel friend. She thinks of those three people out there, waiting for Tyki and none the wiser about his atrocities. It extinguishes her anger, replacing it with a deep sadness. They don't deserve that. She briefly thinks about her own friends: Allen, Kanda, Lavi; then banishes them from her mind immediately.

"You should visit them," she says. "They probably miss you."

Tyki is silent behind her as she wheels away, hoping to get far away from him. She can't believe she hoped she would find a way to soothe her soul even slightly from this curse placed on her. She must suffer and endure. Tyki just flips from charming and kind to cold-hearted and narcissistic too damn easily; she can't survive like he does.

A tear falls from her eyes, and she hates herself again for her weakness.

She doesn't want to disappear into the Noah of Wrath.

 

* * *

 

There's that hatred in her guts again. It's cold outside and the stone wall she brushes her hand against freezes her bare skin, but she feels hot and ready to explode. Those damn dreams again. She's wandered outside in the hopes of cooling her emotions, and she has forgotten to bother to put on shoes or a coat.

She is not a Noah. Well, she is - damn this gray skin - but not mentally. They have not taken her mind. She is still good; she still helps people. They can't take that from her. The memories and thoughts invading and razing her mind can't change who she is.

Sweat rolls down her forehead and neck. Those dreams always work her up like this, filling her heart and brain with all these intense and disgusting emotions. Screams still ring in her ears; women cornered in bedrooms, men tortured on battlefields, children beaten and left for dead. Fear blinds her. Anger takes the reigns, leading her through the confusing reality taking over her mind. 

Her whole body burns. It's always burning now, isn't it? She must be in Hell. She must have cursed God's name one too many times. 

Ragged breathing catches her attention: not because it is a new sound - she is all too familiar with the agony that accompanies those notes - but because there is another voice joining her own desperate breathes. She looks around but can't see. She wipes away sweat-streaked hair from her eyes and forehead and realizes she must have not woken up yet.

A bloodied and battered body lies in the alley she is about to pass. A mugging went wrong here or something possibly worse. Torn clothes surround and drape the petite body on the ground. Lenalee looks closer: blood pours from a gaping stab wound and trickles out pretty lips from the face of this girl. She looks familiar. Lenalee hears a mouse scampering across the rocks in the alley, and she remembers this face.

The waitress from earlier today is breathing heavily, and it almost sounds like she is trying to say something. The gasps and rasps of air have a stuttered pattern to them. Lenalee tries to listen but cannot understand anything. Perhaps the woman's lungs were simply punctured.

Lenalee feels numb staring at this girl. That is new. Normally she feels everything these victims are experiencing: all their heartache and loss, their despair and hatred, their fear and anger. Oh, that all-consuming rage.

This girl must be almost dead then, to feel so numb. She is just suffering through the last bits of fight her body has. The girl's gasps hurt Lenalee's ears. They remind her of all the times she has felt this much pain as well.

Lenalee wheels herself into the alley, getting closer and closer to the girl. A normal person might have thought there was no reaction to her approach, but Lenalee's senses are heightened now. She hears the breathing pick up in pace, get more eccentric in the pattern of gasps and hiccups. She sees one of the girl's fingers start twitching. 

She is in pain. That much is obvious. Lenalee hates seeing the girl like this. She should be sleeping in bed, resting for another day of minor worries and joys, not laying in an alley in a puddle of her own blood with no hope for another look at sunlight. Tracks mark her face where tears and snot have fallen, and fresh tears light up the girl's dulling eyes the closer Lenalee gets.

Lenalee leans down from her wheelchair when she is close enough and reaches a hand towards the girl. She runs her fingers through that curly brown hair - or tries to, anyway. Her fingers keep getting caught in matted and tangled patches from dried blood and dirt. Lenalee's hand comes away red and sticky.

Lenalee stares at her hand, strangely captured by the way the dark, glistening red compliments the gray tone she is forced to look at and wear. Her heart is beating hard and fast. The girl's gasps ring in her ears, and finally Lenalee can make out the words: help me, help me, help me. A voice rings out in Lenalee's head from within the depths of her mind:

_Help her._

Lenalee's hand comes crashing down, shattering bone with a crack and squelch as her fingers dive into brain matter. Red and gray liquid and meat splatter her arms and face, and finally, finally, that painful rasping is silenced. 

That little waitress is okay now. She isn't hurting anymore. A smile slowly slips onto Lenalee's face. She has finally been able to do something good again despite her Noah form. Her mind has finally calmed down from the torrent of emotions that were wrecking her just a few minutes ago. She wipes her hands on her nightgown and begins to make her way back to the inn where she and Lulubell are staying. Her wheelchair creaks and clatters, and she wonders for a brief moment how on earth she got here on her own in her panicked state of mind.

She is halfway back, already putting the girl to the back of her mind like she does with all her nightmares, when she is surprised by the taste of salt against her lips. She licks them to make sure, and sure enough, there is something salty running down her face. She puts her hands against her skin and pulls them away and sees the wetness glistening against her fingertips. Tears?

Why is she crying? She does not feel sad, so why? There is an aching sensation at the back of her mind; it is like a building migraine, itching for her to notice it. She is not thinking clearly. She is tired.

She wants to go back to the Ark and see Road and be done with this mission.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you're liking the story :)


	5. Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a good memory, don't I?

Blood stained hands don’t give Lenalee pause anymore. She’d be dreadfully lonely in the Noah household if they still did. Take this moment for instance. If she was still her old self, she would have thrown a fit over finding the twins sleeping away in her bed. She wouldn’t have wanted murderers touching her things, infecting her space with their presence. Just looking at them would fill her with unease. Now, she doesn’t mind having them around. It’s almost relaxing in a way; their deep breathing fills an otherwise silent room, and she can read a book in peace knowing that they aren’t up to some mischief elsewhere on the ark. Jasdevi usually collapse into the nearest bed they find instead of walking to their room when they’re tired. Lenalee sees no reason in waking them up just for them to stumble into somebody else’s room.  

As it is, she has some quiet now, and she leans into the back of her chair. Lenalee gazes at her own fingers. They are clean now, no longer stained red from that sweet girl all those nights ago. Lulubell had stared at her for a long while when she came back to the inn they were staying at, but she never talked to her about what happened, only speaking enough to say, “let me help you wash that off.” The memories from that night bring her peace. Something in her brain had clicked into place as Lulubell’s hands had run over her own in the water, scrubbing away at red and pink. She finally sees clearly, no longer blinded by the ridiculous brainwashing delivered by all the ordinary humans in her life.

The deep breathing of sleeping souls on the bed lulls her into closing her eyes. Death is often a mercy. She understands that now.

She has not betrayed her friends. She has found a new, perhaps even better way of saving their world. Silent tears slip from her eyes, but Lenalee knows that sometimes doing the right thing is achingly difficult. She promises herself she won’t falter.

* * *

“Lenalee!”

The girl freezes at the call, hardly daring to believe her ears. Why are they here? She chances a glance around the street, looking for an escape plan, looking for Road. She isn’t even on a mission; Road and Lenalee had just come here to visit a sweet shop that Road had begged someone to escort her to. Where has Road gone now? Probably skipped off and disappeared while Lenalee wasn’t looking, and now Lenalee is in this damned situation by herself. The street is populated, so she knows she does not need to worry about a fight – hopes she doesn’t have to worry about a fight, at least.  Her heart is beating far too quickly, and she can hear steps running towards her; she looks around again: sees nowhere she can hide.

Then, it strikes her. Why is she so frightened? She knows this person. They are a friend.  (Still a friend, she hopes.) She takes a deep breath and turns herself around in the wheelchair, almost graceful in her experience with it now, and comes face to face with the person who has just run down the street.

Miranda.

The woman has her hand outstretched towards her, frozen in the position she was in before Lenalee turned around. She had been reaching to touch her, to make sure she was truly there, to get her attention, and now that she has what she wanted it seems that she cannot believe it. Miranda’s brown eyes stare at Lenalee, wide and in shock, and they glisten over, and she breaks out of her trance, takes the final steps towards her, and wraps her arms around the girl.

“Lenalee!” Miranda cries, her voice wavering with the tears she is holding back. She is crushing Lenalee in her arms, and Lenalee can only weakly pat her back in response, her arms in an awkward position from the older woman leaning down over her. Warmth overwhelms the girl, glad to see her dear friend, and her own eyes fill with tears. She has been so scared of this: what she would feel when she saw her old comrades. The Noah gave her so many feelings of love towards her enemies; what would it make her feel towards her friends? Evidently, nothing that could trump her love of them.

(And she thinks, maybe this is what Tyki meant when he said his friends do not matter when he is killing people. Because really, they are not relevant in those moments. She still loves her friends and would take care of them even when she knows she has to do the hardest thing in the end.)

“Lenalee, where did you go? How did you get here? Are you okay? It can’t be true, can it? There must be a misunderstanding, a mistake.” The woman holding her is babbling, tumbling over her words in her scattered thoughts, and Lenalee does her best to stay relaxed in the woman’s arms. She can’t go still at any of the questions; she can’t betray her feelings, can’t let Miranda think that anything is wrong here. The woman is too trusting of her, too much love in her heart to warn her of any danger. The warmth in Lenalee is quickly coupled with another emotion, and then another: fear, then hate. Not towards Miranda, but towards the world, towards the Order, towards Innocence.

Lenalee pushes back Miranda slightly to look at her face. Miranda looks confused for a moment, wondering why the girl has broken contact, but Lenalee smiles at her to reassure her. The woman gives a small smile in return, still fighting back her tears. There’s a scar running on the side of her face, Lenalee notices. It wasn’t there before when Lenalee was still with the Order. She brings her hand up and runs her fingers across the wound, and Miranda seems confused but allows the touch. Pale skin, dark eyes, tangled hair: now that Lenalee can get a good look at her, Miranda looks awful. Tired. Shaken.

The war takes its toll on all of them. The damn war is why all her friends suffer like this. Lenalee would take all their pain away if she could; her friends, people like kind and sweet and eager-to-please Miranda, all deserve better than what the Innocence has forced them into. She wishes she could go back to their side and ease their burdens, and she suddenly feels terribly guilty for the gray skin she hides.

She hasn’t felt this way in months, she realizes. At some point between becoming a Noah and living with them, she has become comfortable with that fact. And here is one of her friends, holding her, cherishing her, wishing beyond all hope and reason that she would never become part of the Noah. It crushes her that Miranda would ever have to see her like that because she knows all it will bring her is more pain and suffering. Unavoidable pain and suffering as well: Lenalee will have to appear on the battlefield at some point, and she can’t possibly join the exorcists anymore. The Order has already made it clear that she will be a prisoner on their side.

Then: a whispering in her mind. There is a way: to take away her friend’s pain, to spare them from having to fight her, to protect them from the war. It is her voice, the Earl’s voice, her Noah’s voice, all chanting in her mind, swelling with hatred against the Innocence and love for those she cares about. Do it, they say. You’re saving your world, they say. Damn everyone else.

“I’m sorry, Miranda,” Lenalee says, and Miranda can only look at her with those tearful eyes and a confused downturn of her lips. Lenalee smiles again, trying to comfort her again, but Miranda sees something in her eyes that seems to scare her, and she is trying to back away now. Her arm is held by Lenalee’s now, preventing her escape, and the girl moves her hand down from Miranda’s face to the clock around her wrist. Blue lighting and purple dark matter crackle in Lenalee’s palm, and Lenalee focuses on Miranda’s wrist, doesn’t let herself look up, doesn’t let herself see Miranda’s horrified expression.

Miranda is pulling her arm forcefully now, trying to get away, but Lenalee has her in an iron grip, her Noah strength finally useful for something besides breaking glass in anger. Tears fall from the girl’s eyes – from happiness or from despair or from something else altogether, she does not know. She brings her palm towards Miranda’s wrist and forces her powers to rush through her arm and towards her target, feeling the Innocence and the bone of the woman’s wrist crack and shatter beneath her skin, seeing the green glow of the holy material shining through the destruction. Miranda screams.

“I love you,” Lenalee says, almost an apology, and Miranda’s Innocence dissolves into green dust. The woman is sobbing, clutching her arm, now released from Lenalee’s grasp, to her chest. Lenalee knows she can’t stay here, knows that Black Order backup will be here soon. She looks up. Road, watching with dark, gleaming eyes, is behind Miranda. There’s a quiet look of contemplation painted across her face, eyes wide with curiosity and mouth set into a line betraying no positive or negative emotions. The girl beckons to the alleyway where she has opened a doorway to the Ark, and Lenalee quickly follows, leaving her sobbing friend behind.

She is safe now, Lenalee thinks with a smile gracing her face. Miranda can leave the war. This is the last battle wound she will ever have to suffer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all... I'm so sorry. Completely forgot I was updating this. Again. I'll post the rest of the chapters every other day to make up for it. Yell at me if I don't.


	6. Civility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remembered :)

“What is this?” Soft snow falls through the air as Lenalee examines the package in her hand. The paper wrapping is a dull green, dotted with darkened spots where snow touched and melted upon it.

“A gift,” Road says, voice muffled by the pink fabric covering her mouth. She has a scarf, far too large for her tiny frame, wrapped around and around her neck. It’s a miracle the girl has not fallen over from the weight of it. It’s well-crafted and impressive in its length, but there’s little frays here and there through the scarf, little areas that stretch more than others, that betray the creator’s skill. The scarf is homemade, not by an artisan, although whoever knitted it certainly has experience with needles.

“From who?”

“From the Earl and me.”

“Oh?” Lenalee doesn’t have to act surprised. She glances at Road before looking back at the green box. Curiosity overcomes her, and she unwraps the package in her hands on the spot. Her fingers scratch away the paper covering and meet rough cardboard, and then her hands brush against something soft and yielding to her touch. A scarf, much like Road’s own, reveals itself to her, but a soft yellow greets her gaze instead of pink, and there’s fringes of a light, leafy green tickling the ends of the fabric. Road points to the ends, the messy yarn bits waving in the winter wind.

“I added those!” She says, and Lenalee smiles and wraps the scarf around herself. It’s not the most fashionable piece of cloth she has worn, but it is certainly warm.

“Thank you, Road.”

“Thank the Earl too.”

“He’s not here right now.”

“Then when you see him, yeah?”

Lenalee nods her head, but she isn’t thinking about that man right now. It’s still difficult to think about the Millennium Earl without getting a pounding headache. Instead, she watches the snowflakes and white petals flutter through the air. It’s a beautiful day. She hopes her friends are enjoying the day outside too, and not stuck inside training for an ugly future. She hopes they are giving each other gifts too.

The snow reminds her of Allen. It’s his birthday soon too – or the day he decides to celebrate his birthday, at least. She hopes he is safe, wherever he is out there in the world.

* * *

The Noah family still keeps her out of the loop on most matters even though they seem to trust her. There is still too much exorcist in her to tell her as much as they would any other new family member about what they are doing. It is for the better that they don’t tell her everything. She would rather not think about where Tyki is going at night or what Fiidora listens to all day. All she cares about is the news of their body counts. No unnecessary deaths of people she recognizes. No newly dead exorcists. The Earl keeps his deal with her.

She no longer despairs at the prospect of their deaths, but she would prefer them to stay in this world with her if they can. The Innocence just needs to be destroyed; then, they can see each other again.

Lenalee never said anything about Miranda, but Road must have told everyone during one of the family dinners Lenalee is usually absent from. They all look at her in a different way now. Lulubell in particular surprises her. She nods at Lenalee in greeting when they pass each other in the halls; Lenalee often forgets to nod back, expecting her usual terse glance.

It’s one of those days when Lenalee is chastising herself for being rude to the woman when she stumbles across Fiidora. He’s sitting in an open area of the Ark, basking in fake sunlight and a stilted breeze. He has his eyes closed. There’s an odd muttering of noise around him, almost like voices, and the wheels of Lenalee’s chair creak to a stop as she watches him. She needs to get some oil on the hinges.

The sound attracts Fiidora’s attention, and his eyes, all twenty something of them, are on Lenalee. The two on his face, where most people’s eyes are, gaze at her in a friendly way, but the ones on his tongue whirl in circles and blink in quick bursts. The monstrous tongue makes Lenalee’s hairs raise, warning her of their unnatural and creepy existence.

The man has always been nice to her, so there’s no reason to act rude. She doesn’t really know him well – or at all, really. She picks her hand up and waves it in greeting.

“Hello, Fiidora.” He waves back, but soon leans back and closes his eyes again, listening to that murmuring. Lenalee tries to understand the sounds, but there are too many voices whispering at the same time for her to distinguish any words. She wheels closer to him, and while the voices get clearer, she still can’t make any sense of them.

“What are you listening to?” She asks, hoping to finally learn something about the man before her.

“The voices.”

“Whose voices?”

“The exorcists’ voices,” he says, and Lenalee’s eyebrows shoot up.

“What do you mean by that?” Fiidora stares at Lenalee for a moment, sizing her up, and then pokes at his tongue. It retreats and then swells under his touch, sending a ripple through the organ, and Lenalee does her best to not appear absolutely disgusted by the pulsating movement. Several of the eyes roll back into the flesh of the organ, and many of the voices in the air grow quiet. It’s easier for Lenalee to pick out individual voices now, with only a few dominating. She hears a familiar voice ordering lunch, and another familiar voice replying.

Her heart beats speed up. Chaoji and Jerry. Those are their voices, going through their normal lives. Lenalee snaps her gaze from the blinking eyeball their voices are emanating from and towards Fiidora’s face. The man smiles at her and pokes at his tongue again. The voices swell again, drowning out the ones she recognizes.

Fiidora is spying on the Black Order. The Noah have ears within their walls. Lenalee finds herself stumped by what to do with this knowledge and continues to stare at the man who provided her with such revelations. A scream, terrifyingly familiar, jumps out from the cacophony of sounds, and Lenalee’s heart takes off like a racehorse.

“Who was that?” She asks, eyes wide.

“I think,” Fiidora puts his hand on his forehead, trying to remember what the name of that man was. Lenalee’s heart pounds with every second that it takes Fiidora to think. “I think it was someone named Lavi.”

Lenalee’s heart drops.


	7. Monotony

“Thank you for the scarf,” Lenalee says. The trees are showering green and the flowers are blooming outside the ark, so she wonders if the man even remembers what she is talking about. The creak of the rocking chair in the center of the room fills an otherwise silent room.

“You don’t need to thank me. The holidays are for giving gifts to family.” The Earl puts down and lays in his lap the knitting needles and whatever little project he is working on. He continues staring at the threads, and his thoughts and emotions are incomprehensible through the monstrous face he wears.  “I know you did not come here just to say that to me.”

Lenalee nods her head. She stays silent even though she knows what she wants to say. The issue is how to say it. Should she be loud and demanding? Quiet and submissive? The other Noah often speak respectfully yet casually around the Earl, but there is still that cautious distance between herself and the leader of the clan.

A headache starts building in her temples. She exhales in a quick breath and thinks _damn it._

“I want to see him.” The Earl says nothing in response, and the silence pushes against Lenalee, building the pressure in her head. “Lavi – I want to see him.”

“The bookman apprentice? It would not be a good idea for you to see him.” The Earl picks up his needles and continues with turning strands of yarn into loops and stitches. The message is clear: the conversation is done, and his answer is no. The ache in Lenalee’s head starts pounding away at her skull, and her fingers curl into fists.

She shouldn’t argue with him. She can’t. But, she can still be damn upset about it. The Earl pauses in his work and glances at her still form.

“Seeing him will only upset you both,” he says. The click of the needles hitting each other grate on Lenalee’s ears, but she tries to listen to the man. “You can’t help him, and he won’t understand your situation.”

Lenalee replays his words as she turns and wheels herself out of the room. As the door shuts behind her, she grasps at her head and massages her temples. The Earl is right, she tells herself. She should listen to him. She can’t do anything about his decision without dire consequences, so she should make herself believe him. It’s how she can survive in this life.

The pounding in her head slows and reduces to an ache again. Would she be able to stand Lavi looking at her in disgust? Would Lavi realize that she’s still here underneath the gray skin? Or would he block her out and think the Noah were trying to trick him? What would she even do if she saw him? Letting him go would surely be an outright betrayal against the family. That would be disastrous for everyone involved. Would he even accept any help she offered?

She needs to forget about him until she can do something for him. Her heart protests the idea, but she does not want to hurt her friends. She’s sure the Earl will break his promise and kill Lavi if there’s any hint that she will betray the family.

She needs to do the smart thing. She needs to do what’s hard.

Lenalee pushes herself away from the room and goes about her day.

* * *

Time passes in relative peace with Lenalee going on missions with various other Noah family members. They are more like guardians for her than mission partners, but it is nice to go outside and not be stuck in the Ark. It is also nice to interact with them, she must admit. There’s a bond between them all, something intangible that makes even quiet or angry moments feel familiar, and Lenalee feels like she is dreaming, connected so deeply to these people she has only known for such a short while in comparison to someone like Komui. She misses her brother often, but that ache in her soul is somehow soothed by smiles from Road or talks with the other Noah. She hopes she can see him again, but she knows she will be okay without him.

Sometimes, she thinks she might be okay without seeing anyone from the Order again. She does miss them, but what good would come from seeing them again? They would only be enemies. Lenalee would never want to hurt her friends, but she would never want to hurt the Noah either.

They are family, she realizes. Her and the Noah. They are no longer just a clan to her; she really does care about them.

* * *

Lenalee’s head still aches. Sometimes, she thinks about Lavi – stuck somewhere within the Ark, she thinks – and she wonders if she made the right choice. She is outside alone, rolling through a small town and listening to the general noise and hum of human activity. Road wanted to come with her, but Lenalee had rebuffed her hugs and hand pulling.

“I need to think alone for a bit. I want to breathe some real air,” she had told the girl and received a pout in response. Something about Lenalee – perhaps her quiet voice or maybe the way she rubbed her fingers against her forehead – ticked off a bell in Road’s head that told her she should let the woman do what she wanted.

She wishes Road had protested more.

A woman’s scream pierces the air, and a clamorous chaos rises throughout the town in waves as more people yell and run away and hide. Lenalee’s chest grows hot and the ache in her head explodes into a full assault. She feels as though knives are stabbing her skull, and perhaps they are. If the sword protruding from her chest was instead stabbing through her brain, that would explain why her head felt like it was splitting in two.

Her skin is burning and scabbing and burning again. She is on fire. Anger at this sudden attack, at this disruption of her peace, consumes her, and the Noah within her ignites her body with lightning. Smoke rises from her chest, and she sees through the red invading her vision the green glow emanating from the blade within her.

_Innocence._

She loses herself. Her mind is wiped. Lenalee is conscious again within a few seconds, but those moments of nonexistence terrify her to the core. Her anger flares in the fear, compounding both emotions and nearly erasing her again.

Her hands are clinging to the blade, blood pouring from her wound and from her slashed palms. The sword jerks against her body, but she refuses to let it go, to let it retreat from her body and disappear. It burns her insides and black stars dance in her red vision, but she refuses to let it go. Not again. She can’t let it leave intact again. Lightning surges through her arms, blackening her muscles, exposing the bones. She burns herself more than the sword burns her inside. She can’t let the pain weaken her.

The sword cracks in her hands. The struggle against her grows wilder, thrashing her body against the ground - her wheelchair had burned away at the first crack of lightning through her. She hears cursing from someone – they must be holding the sword – and the voice stirs something within her, but she cannot think rationally and figure out why this voice sounds special.

She is going to die if she doesn’t let go. She doesn’t care. The Innocence needs to perish. Fire surges through her arms again, and the disgusting Innocence inside her shatters. It feels like glass shards have exploded in her guts, and she screams.

A black cloud flies overhead, and Lenalee disappears into darkness.

* * *

Lenalee cannot recognize her reflection for several months. Every inch of her body is always wrapped in bandages and rags, and they rip off her skin – if one can call the red, bleeding membrane around her muscles skin – in a sickening squelch.

She reaches out her hands to the glass. The white demon standing behind her is more comforting that the being standing where she should be. It hurts to move, but she needs to look at herself, to remind herself that she’s still here.

“Hey, your hair’s growing back!” A sing-song voice chimes in from the bathroom door. Lenalee says nothing to Road. It still hurts to move her mouth. The girl hangs around her as often as she did before the attack – perhaps even more – and Lenalee wonders if she ever feels regret about leaving her alone that day.

Would Kanda have killed her if the Earl hasn’t sent Tyki to check on her after an Akuma had reported exorcist activity where she had gone? She doesn’t remember destroying Mugen, but she’s gathered that she must have by the conversations of the Noah who talk to and around her. He must have been infuriated. She can’t imagine Kanda without his Innocence; what would he do with his life if he couldn’t be an exorcist? Lenalee hopes that her actions have set the man free: that he is exploring the world away from the Order and the war and finding good in his life.

Did he intend to kill her? He probably thinks she is lost to the Noah after what she did to Miranda. Does he consider her just another enemy to destroy now? She can’t blame him for those thoughts, but it still makes her heart heavy. She hadn’t even noticed him before the sword had pierced her; there was absolutely no hesitation in his attack that she could sense.

Lavi would feel the same towards her. She resigns herself to that idea and touches one of the pink splotches underneath her right eye. At least the bandages have stopped turning red now.

“The Earl told me we’ll probably be able to take all those off soon.” Road again. Her positivity doesn’t make Lenalee happy, but it’s better than being alone with the pain. The girl smiles and walks toward Lenalee but then thinks better of whatever she wanted to do and steps back again. “I wonder how long soon is though. Another couple of months, eh?”

Another eternity of these dark walls and stifling air awaits her. More lingering days of nothing but burning skin and her own thoughts. Lenalee sighs deeply and leans back against her wheelchair.

“So boring,” she manages to rasp out, the first words she’s said in months. Her throat and chest feel like a flame has been run down her organs and muscles, used like a matchbox sparking a stick. Road’s laughter doesn’t help her pain, but it does make her wish she could smile with her.

Just a little longer, and she’ll be okay. Lenalee finds herself grateful, once more, for the resilience of her Noah body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remembered AGAIN :)


	8. Denial

She still hasn’t left the ark, but she’s as healthy as can be. Her legs are still fucked up, and she’s still in constant pain, but at least her skin has grown back.  Her days are boring beyond belief, but at least the pain is gone.

Lenalee wishes her days had stayed boring.

“Tyki!” Lenalee cries out when she stumbles across the man. She wheels herself toward him, pushing down the fear that flares up at the sight of blood. The intensity of the terror striking her nearly freezes her; she realizes now that she hasn’t felt like this, felt this nightmare of mortality hanging over herself and her loved ones, since she left the Order. She didn’t even feel like this when she flirted with death; she was too angry, too beyond herself to feel fear like this. Tyki stops walking when he hears her and stays still long enough for her to reach him. Her hands run over bruises and cuts and blood, looking for the wounds that caused this mess. He’s not burned to a crisp like she was, but he still looks like the walking dead.

“I’m fine, Lenalee,” he says, grinning at her and tossing aside her concern, but there’s something off about his expression. His eyes aren’t gleaming like they normally do when he teases her. Blood is trickling down his face, and he wipes it from his eyes like it doesn’t bother him at all. The last time Tyki looked injured from a battle was when Allen had tried to exorcise the Noah in him. Lenalee narrows her eyes at him.

“What happened? Where’s Road?”  Lenalee’s blood grows colder and her hands stop fidgeting when Tyki avoids her eyes. Silence stretches between them, and she can hear crashes and smashing sounds from somewhere nearby in the Ark.  Someone raging. She wonders if it is Sheryl, and if Tyki went to his brother before wandering through the Ark towards his own room. Tyki must realize she can hear these noises as well, and he waves his hands, trying to minimize the situation.

“I’m not sure. She’s okay though, I think. Just gone for now. I’m sure she’ll be back later,” he says. He almost looks nervous, and Lenalee sees red for a moment. What does he mean she’s just “gone?” If Tyki is this bloody, what the hell does Road look like? She’s shaking now, so she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Tyki said Road’s okay. She’ll be back. When Lenalee opens her eyes, Tyki is a step farther away from her than she remembers. She stares at him, so many questions flowing through her brain, wanting to ask him all of them, but the man looks like he just wants to crash and pass out in the next five minutes.

“Where’s Allen?” she finally asks. A rescue mission is the whole reason Tyki and Road had left in the first place. When Lenalee found out that Allen was being held captive as a prisoner in the Order on charges of becoming the Fourteenth Noah, she wanted to come along and get him out of there. She still remembers her own imprisonment, the pain and mental anguish, and couldn’t stand thinking about Allen remaining in that horrible situation for a second longer. The others had refused to let her go; she still needed to heal; she still wasn’t ready to fight. She had reluctantly given in and spent the last couple of hours biting her nails until they nearly bled.

“He didn’t want to come,” Tyki says, and although Lenalee isn’t surprised, confusion makes her brows furrow. Where did he go then? If Tyki left the boy at the Order, Lenalee would never forgive him. She shakes her head. No, Tyki isn’t that stupid. She considers the man’s condition and wonders who gave him those injuries. Surely it wasn’t Allen?

“Apocryphos,” he says, gesturing towards himself as if that suffices for an explanation for his state. Something about that name sends a wave of anxiety through Lenalee, but she can’t think of why. It’s a memory that still hasn’t come to her, and with the feeling it gave her, she hopes she won’t have to remember it. Tyki doesn’t seem to notice her lack of knowledge, and he continues without further explanation of whatever Apocryphos is. “Allen got away, left using the old Ark. Seems he wants to follow his own path.”

The thought of Allen alone is not comforting to Lenalee. She remembers how empty his smiles were the last time she saw him. Everyone’s wariness of the Noah within him chipped away at his spirits with every passing day. Now, with his awakening, she knows he must have been in an even worse place. Hatred and fear: everything Allen Walker did not want or deserve to inspire in others was placed upon his shoulders the second his eyes flashed gold. Waking up as a Noah is hard and painful, especially when it is something one fights against and the Noah memory is trying to erase the previous inhabitant of the mind being taken over. Lenalee can’t imagine going through it alone; at least she had Road to soothe the worst of the nightmares and pain.

And now Road is gone as well. Allen Walker and Road were both here one moment and then slipping away the next with no warning. She can’t really protect her loved ones, can she? She’s failed so many times. Lenalee’s vision starts to blur, and she realizes she’s on the verge of tears. She swipes a hand up to her face, intent on wiping away her show of weakness, but Tyki has already noticed.

“Lenalee,” he says, getting her attention to shift to him. He looks uncomfortable, being put in this role, and he tries to run a hand through his hair. His fingers get caught in the sticky mess of drying blood and matted strands. Tyki lets out an irritated sigh as he pulls his hand away, giving up on the absolute disaster that is his hair.  “They’ll be fine. Our Noah memory didn’t cry, so Road’s okay, all right? And do you really think Allen Walker won’t find a way out of this damn mess? He’s already come back to life more times than I care to count.”

Lenalee looks away from him, considering his words. It’s all true. It sounds logical.

She still feels like shit. She knows she won’t feel better until she can see them again. A weight on top of her head breaks her musing, and she looks up with eyebrows raised.

“Don’t cry on me, please?” Tyki says with a bit of a desperate plea in his voice. He awkwardly pats her head once, twice. Lenalee just stares at him, wondering if Tyki Mikk is really doing this right now. He’s been soft on her ever since she was burnt to a crisp, but only by avoiding her and not through any gestures like this. He retracts his hand when she doesn’t respond. “Too weird?” he asks then, his lips twitching upward in amusement. Lenalee just shakes her head at the man.

“Go clean yourself up, Tyki,” she sighs. She starts wheeling herself away before he can say anything back to her. She almost wants to laugh at Tyki’s attempt at comforting her, but she still feels empty and worried despite the little chance for a laugh she has been granted.

A hand lands on her shoulder, and Lenalee looks up, stopped in her exit. Tyki is still smiling slightly, but if Lenalee stares long enough, she can see that it is hollow. He bites his lip and looks behind himself before saying anything.

“I know the Earl says you shouldn’t see him, but do you want to?” Tyki says quietly, almost whispering. Lenalee has no idea what he is talking about, and her brain flashes through everyone she knows. Her thoughts screech to a stop when they alight on a flame of red hair and a twinkling green eye. Lenalee’s own eyes shine at Tyki. Is he playing with her?

“Follow me,” he says. He smiles at her, beckoning her forward, and Lenalee hesitates. The Earl said it was a bad idea. She should probably listen to him. Her heart aches for a familiar face however, and the yearning is crushing her chest. She has to live without Allen and Road both now, and Lenalee realizes that this is an apology from Tyki.

Forgive me for coming home empty-handed, this gesture says. Forgive me for not bringing Allen home. Forgive me for not keeping Road safe. Tyki is smiling and playing off this visit as a fun secret between them, but she can see through the mask. She’s one of Allen’s closest friends after all; this little act is far beneath the skills she has honed with uncovering Allen’s lies.

Tyki is hurting at his failure. He wants to cover it up. Lenalee lets a smile cover her own face, and she follows him, both for herself and for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just two chapters left after this one. I hope you're all enjoying the story :)


	9. Regret

The Earl was right.

Entering that dark cell was painful enough for Lenalee. The thought of her friend staying here all alone twists her heart, let alone the sight of the obvious injuries gracing his body and face. Tyki stays at the entrance to the cell as Lenalee rushes forward. She would throw her arms around Lavi if she could, but as she is, she just wheels herself close and lays a hand against his face.

"Lavi?” she says, smiling despite the heartache afflicting her at his situation. “It’s me, Lenalee.”

He looks at her, and he is not smiling, not frowning, not crying. He just looks at her. Lenalee’s smile slips off her face, and she turns her body to look at Tyki. The man just shrugs. She looks back at the redhead, and he is still simply looking at her.

“Lavi?” Lenalee bites her lip. Have the Noah hurt him too much? There’s a sinking feeling in her gut, and she wishes he had just told them whatever they had wanted to know. Keeping quiet has clearly done nothing good. She goes to shake him, trying to jolt him into reacting, when he finally speaks.

“You’re a Noah now,” he says, no question in his voice. Lenalee stares at him. Her eyes flick to her skin – gray – and back to his eyes, and she does not know what to say. She confirms his statement with a nod. Lavi doesn’t break eye contact with her, but there’s still no emotion in him. He stares at her with those dead eyes, and they are not all that unfamiliar to Lenalee. He’d smile with these eyes often, back at the Order. They’d sparkle a bit sometimes too, in those rare moments with Kanda and Allen and her, away from Bookman, but those eyes were much rarer than the ones she sees now.

“Damn,” he finally says, sighing and looking away. Lenalee tries to engage him again, but he keeps staring at some point past her. He’s still there and listening, always alert like a Bookman should be, but he has nothing to gain from her. He’s disappeared from her grasp, and for the first time in a while, tears spring to her eyes.

Tyki is by her side, laying heavy hands on her shoulders and guiding her out of the room. She wipes her eyes quickly, thanking him for the visit, but she knows she is too slow and that he has seen her distress.

How much did Lavi care about her back at the Order? About any of them? Surely, he must have felt something. He’s probably angry and upset because of her awakening.

Lenalee rubs her hands against her eyes again.

The Earl was right.

She should have listened.

* * *

Lenalee’s nightmares have come back. Every night she wakes up shaking and drenched in sweat, gasping for breath she thought she would never be able to take again. The end of the world overwhelms her thoughts, and memories of past cruelties and pain leave her sobbing and choking back screams. She had forgotten how it felt to walk through a fog like this, plagued by exhaustion. Her bones feel heavy like steel; her head feels like it is stuffed with cotton and brambles.

Tyki offers to take her to a bar some nights after Road disappeared.

“It’ll make you forget about everything for a while,” he had said, avoiding her eyes. He was a bit tipsy himself, and Lenalee had waved him off. She wonders if he feels guilty about losing Road despite the temporary situation it is. He’s come home drunk before, but Lenalee has the feeling that it has become more frequent. She’s never paid attention to his coming and going before, so she can’t be sure about that.

Road’s disappearance seems to have taken most of the energy of the ark with her. The Earl hasn’t been holding family dinners for quite some time. Everyone is avoiding each other. Everyone seems tired when Lenalee looks at them, dead eyes meeting glazed ones. Road would normally be jumping around between family members, chattering away and breaking the tension. Lenalee wonders if the girl jumped between all their dreams too, keeping the nightmares of the coming and passed apocalypses from them.

Lenalee stares up at the dark ceiling. Her brain is buzzing with nothing. Her new family is drifting. Her old friends are missing from her life. If she sleeps, she’ll be tormented by nightmares. If she stays awake any longer, she may lose her sanity.

She needs to do something. Get out of this monotony. Take some action to change something in this damn place. She can’t bring Road back from whatever dimension she’s hidden away in, so what can she do? Road’s disappearance hasn’t been the only failure of the Noah clan in recent time. The Earl’s depression has locked him away in some corner of the ark, so the Noah wander and plot aimlessly. Jasdevi have gone off on what sounded to Lenalee like a revenge hunt for Road, and she considers trying to go after them; whatever managed to hurt Road’s true form could do worse to the twins. She does not know where they have gone though, and even if she did find them, she’s sure they would slip out of her grasp and run away, perhaps knocking a wheel out of her chair in the process.

She’s been out of the game for destroying Innocence since Kanda attacked her. Her reflexes have never fully recovered, and she no longer has the element of surprise on her side. All of the Order must know by now of her betrayal – what they _think_ is betrayal in their shortsightedness – so there are no more Miranda situations waiting for her.

Lenalee stops rolling through the hallway and sighs, dropping her head into her hands. What the hell can she do? She just rolls and rolls through the ark, desperate for a purpose. A scuffing sound - shoes against gravel - catches her straining ears, and she looks up in time to see Tyki slipping through an ark door. He’s probably going out to drink at a bar again.

But, he’s not in his street clothes. Tyki is dressed up in a suit, back straight and walking with a purpose. Lenalee looks behind her and around: nobody else is near. She goes down the hallway to the door, another ordinary white block of wood among the hundreds of others in the ark, and cracks it open. An alleyway greets her. The clacking of shoes on pavement and the chattering of conversation sing in her ears, and she remembers white hot pain and hesitates.

Lenalee shouldn’t go out into the world alone again. It’s not smart for her to wander with her inability to react fast and her lack of mobility. Her last foray outside should have been lesson enough. Still. She looks behind her again, back at the safety and artificial quiet of the ark.

Damn it, Lenalee thinks, and she tastes the fresh air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one chapter left :)


	10. Forgiveness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter!!

Lenalee didn’t think she would see Allen again like this. Masses of people move around her, blocking her vision every few feet, but that boy’s bright white hair steals her gaze when her eyes dart around again, searching for his form. He sways on his feet, and the crowd seems to form a halo around him – nobody wants to be near that strange man with his scar and deformed arm.

Without thinking, Lenalee pushes herself through the crowd, trying to get closer to her friend. She reaches out for him, but his figure eludes her, slipping farther and closer and farther again. This city is far too cluttered and busy to accommodate her mobility, and she might lose him. Tyki is in this crowd somewhere – where else would he have gone? He must be shaking his head at the sight of her.

“A –” she starts to call out but catches herself when she sees his limbs stiffen. He’ll run at the sound of his name. She doesn’t want him to run. Allen stops and turns to scan the crowd. His eyes are shifty, looking for threats and danger, and they look right over her without any recognition.

His pause gives Lenalee time to push past nameless bodies and get within feet of him. He’s already turning around and walking again when Lenalee gets close, so she reaches out, grasping for him, and her fingers tighten and pull on the loose fabric of his shirt. He spins around with his arm outstretched, ready for a fight, and his eyes are wide and black. Allen pulls away from her, but Lenalee holds on tight, almost toppling out of her chair, and that’s when Allen finally takes a good look at her.

The next thing Lenalee knows, she’s enveloped in warmth and nearly crushed from all sides. She wraps her arms around the boy in front of her and ignores the dampness gathering at her shoulder. People glance at them awkwardly as they pass, avoiding eye contact but curious at to what the occasion is for such a display, but neither of them care. When they pull apart after what feels like hours yet still not enough time, Lenalee sees the glistening of Allen’s eyes and the small, awfully fake smile on his lips. He knows. Somehow, he knows she has joined the Noah, and the sadness pours from him in waves. Lenalee’s heart squeezes in on itself, trying to crumple up and hide away from his judgmental gaze. She’s done what she’s had to with the hand she was dealt in life. Allen of all people must understand that.

He reaches out and takes her hands in his; a jolt of hatred rushes through Lenalee at her proximity to the Innocence, but she buries the feeling into a dark and hidden part of her brain by focusing on her love for her friend. She does not want to hurt him. If she needs to, she will get rid of that damned Innocence, but Allen is special. That hole in his heart will open back up and steal him from this world if the Innocence is gone. She needs to be careful.

Allen’s words to her flutter through her mind; at first, she is not focusing too much on them – she is just glad to hear the voice of her friend. The eyes in front of her grow dark and Allen’s eyebrows furrow in his seriousness, and she realizes he’s asking something very important of her. She turns his words over in her head, over and over, staring at him and thinking, wondering: is that possible? Is it worth the risk? The chance of success is small – impossibly so.

Allen still wants her to try. Something in Lenalee revolts at the idea, turning her nauseous and screaming a headache into her head, but the woman has the sense that these are not her own feelings. It has been difficult for her to distinguish between herself and the Noah lately, but this is different; that realization hits Lenalee like a kick to the head, and her heart starts pounding, thinking over Allen’s proposition to her. Beads of sweat start forming on her forehead, and she must look mad, going all wild over nothing but words.

Allen is still waiting for an answer. His hands are warm against her own, and he has dropped that fake smile from his lips. He stares at her now with only determination and a grim façade. Lenalee nods her head, agreeing with his plan, and still, Allen does not smile.

* * *

They go to a forest outside the town. Allen wishes they could go farther, but they are limited by time and mobility, so this distance from the crowd will have to do. If anything should go wrong, at least there’s some distance between here and the nearest civilian.

“Ready?” Allen sighs and closes his eyes. He puts his hands together, clasped in prayer, and Lenalee is almost surprised until she remembers all the times she has found Allen, kneeling in silence before a grand cross, in the Order’s church. Lenalee closes her own eyes too, looking for answers in the blackness that meets her. The Noah within her is quiet. Is it mad at her? Or is it just complacent without any anger to fuel it?

“Yes,” she says, and when she opens her eyes, she is staring down Allen’s sword of exorcism. There’s a brilliance to the weapon that Lenalee’s eyes lacked the ability to see before; shimmers of green and an aura of pure power hovers around the whole thing, and something deep within her body retreats at the sight. Her skin goes pale; her chest grows cold; her eyes widen. Allen hesitates, and she shakes her head.

“Do it,” she says. The sword is plunged into her chest as the words leave her lips, and for one blissful moment, she feels absolutely nothing. Her mind throws her back to when Kanda attacked her, when his Innocence slashed her skin and organs, and she screams. Kanda’s attack was quick and bloody and terrible, but this is different. Her very soul is splitting apart, tearing into fibers and burning into nonexistence.

There’s something worse than the sword ripping her in half. Her legs: they’re hot – too hot. Her limbs are torching her, and despite the pain that’s consuming her, she manages to look down and see the part of her body that has betrayed her. The twisting blackness of her skin sends a shock through her as though a bell was struck against every bone within her. Her legs are cracking; she’d almost think she was hallucinating, seeing her body as some strange stone sculpture, if it wasn’t for the black blood oozing out of the shatters in her skin. There, within that blackness, she sees shards of glowing green. She wants to tear at her legs and rip them right off. If only Kanda had aimed lower, maybe she would have had her freedom from the damn cage of Innocence anchoring her.

Allen pulls the sword from her body. Lenalee’s mind dips into a white emptiness, but before her vision goes blank, she sees a look of terror on his face.

She floats in the nothing, and that look of Allen’s floats with her. It reminds her of Miranda’s face, and of that woman in the alley, and of all her friends throughout their dangerous battles of the war. They’re always so frightened. Even Kanda is scared, Lenalee knows, even if he refuses to show it. She just wants all the pain and fear to stop. None of them deserve this.

Maybe she does though, for turning to the Noah like this. She can still feel the pain wracking her body, and Allen must be fighting her consumed form, but it is distant in a way, like she’s fading away. She looks down and realizes her legs are gone. The Innocence must have taken them, she thinks. That is why my legs are on fire. They are in Hell. I have fallen.

But then, she realizes she cannot see anything at all. Her legs aren’t here, but neither is the rest of her body. She’s just a consciousness, floating in this abyss, and maybe she’ll never find her way out. Is this for the better? Is this where the Noah lived while she experienced reality? It must have been lonely in here; no wonder it kept trying to talk to her.

Among the terrified faces of her friends, she sees Tyki and Road and Lulubell and the twins and even the Earl. Her consciousness twists around their forms, and she feels the strands of her soul splitting between the Noah and the Order. Her love for the Noah is not her own, but in her time with them, in her haze of Noah thoughts and beliefs, she has come to care for them, or at least been inflicted with the curse of an inability to hate them. Is she really abandoning them?

Pain flares from somewhere above her, and if she had eyes to cry with, Lenalee would be sobbing right now. She is not angry for the first time in quite a while: this must be her true emotions. Lenalee is a scared and quiet girl, yearning for the end of all this pain. She must remain strong though; if she vanishes now, it would crush Allen to find her lifeless body. The thought of his sadness, of her erasing herself into nothing, of her friends out in the world without support and protection and love – it all sparks something in her heart, and she thinks: no, maybe I am angry.

She gasps as she breaks the surface of her mind, and she is achingly aware for precious seconds. The forest is destroyed, blood sticks to every pore, and her skin is an alien yellow, crackling with lightning and fire. Allen is before her, panting and bleeding and crying. His body is stiff, every twitch and movement betraying his hesitation to engage in this battle.

“Allen,” Lenalee manages, and her voice sounds odd: rough and gravely like she hasn’t spoken in months. She twists her lips into what she hopes is a smile. “Set me free.”

She starts drowning again, white washing over her. She hopes Allen heard her and understood: she believes in him, and if he can’t defeat this Noah, then she forgives him for everything.

Her chest explodes in pain again, and she chokes on a smile.

Allen Walker did not hesitate again.

* * *

“Lenalee – ” she wakes up to the sound of her name. Someone’s voice – someone familiar – keeps calling for her, and when she opens her eyes, everything is blurry. She’s still in the haze of sleep, barely breaking free.

There’s a horrible smell in the air, and although there isn’t anything particularly disgusting about it, her eyes start watering. She tries to sit up, but she can’t. She can’t feel anything, and she can’t even tell if any of this is real. Is she still in her mind? Did the Noah take over?

Is she dead?

Still, that terrible smell lingers. Something shines above her, banishing the darkness that lingers at the edge of her vision. She hears her name again, and Lenalee bursts into tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know if you liked the fic :)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is technically done, but there's parts of it I want to flesh out more and other parts I want to edit. Hope you enjoy reading this fic or that it at least helps you pass the time well :)


End file.
